No5

During most holidays, the ones not in the winter at least, people traipse over to a park and mill around. There are several obligatory things at the parks during these celebrations: Beggars, noise makers for children, giant kazans of plov, enough shashlik smoke to black out an entire quarter of the park, and strange photo opt scenes set up for families and children to pose at. Since this year is the year of the rabbit, there were lots of giant creepy stuffed rabbit things for children to cling to, sit on, or be terrified of. I go with option three. Imagine a demented taxidermist making the Donnie Darko bunny costume out of felt and then for some reason more than half of them were painted with cheetah spots. Don't ask me... There were also the standard assortment of giant toy trucks, terrifying reindeer, giant fake flowers, arches, and weird fake backdrops. I'm always surprised that there are such long lines for the picture scenes.

We always walk around the whole park looking and being generally confused by this or that and we always run across one spot filled with the noise of several gas generators. The first time I saw this place I was confused but then we got closer and found that these generators are used to power printers that spit out the pictures people wait in line for. Somehow, maybe on the camera or in some other secret area filled with computers, they manage to put the most horrifyingly tacky borders on each of the pictures. Imagine random, off-brand Disney characters, flowers, English gibberish, and seasonal decorations for the wrong season framing a picture of a terrified Kazakh toddler perched on the back of a giant moose thing covered in purple felt with his older brother menacing him with a fake machine gun. This is totally 100% true. I don't think even I could make this up...