Girne Municipality – Christmas
in Bariş Park
By Margaret Sheard….
Thankfully the rain stayed away and the sun shone on Tuesday 23rd December, when the Girne Municipality had its Christmas Fair at Bariş Park, there were many people visiting the stalls selling bric-a-brac, jewellery, cakes and other foods. I even saw a candy floss maker, that was a blast from the past. We spotted some of the Anglo Turkish Association committee who were there to promote ATA and Kyrenia Animal Rescue were there for a few hours in the afternoon. It is a little disappointing that there were so few expatriate societies present at the fair and 
more stalls to attract people to visit. Jewel Pearce, the Secetary of ATA, told us that she had suggested to the “Friends” Line Dancers that they might like to perform during the day and they were pleased to take part as they do at many festivals in North Cyprus throughout the year.
We said hello to the new Mayor of Girne – Nidal Gűngördű and also 
Derman Atik, the Director of Culture, who is now minus his beard, in fact I did not recognise him. During the afternoon the “Friends” Line Dancers performed, all in fancy dress and the audience loved their dancing to Christmas songs as well as other well-known music.
Following the line dancing, the Mayor gave a speech, in Turkish which was also translated in English and he welcomed everyone and said he was there to celebrate Christmas with the expatriate community and the New Year which is the Turkish Cypriot celebration, and he hoped 
that this type of event will bring all of the various nationalities together. The Municipality wants all nationalities living in the Girne area to feel they are part of the community and help it to develop into a wonderful place for all to enjoy.
I also bumped into our friend Sergey Eletskikh who does a lot of work within the Russian community in North Cyprus and he said he would be performing later with Andrey Dolganov and some of his other Russian friends. Sergey loves to play his guitar and sing and we have seen him performing at Russian get-togethers in the past and enjoyed listening to him singing Russian folk songs as well as other modern music. Unfortunately, we were not able to stay to hear him perform on this occasion but I have taken some of his photographs from Facebook for this article.
When we were leaving there were children on the little train which runs around the park and also enjoying the merry-go-round and the “bouncy” area.
There was to be music and festivity until 10pm so I am sure many more people will have visited the Christmas fair during the evening and we hope there will be another similar event next year to bring all of the communities together.
