Friday, January 01, 1999
Worldwide party in New Year 2000
Special events for millennium
BY HOLLIS L. ENGLEY
Gannett News Service
The countdown to 2000 will occupy our minds, media and social calendars even more. Just hours after ringing in 1999, the question looms: Where will you be Dec. 31, 1999?
From Bluff township in New Zealand, to the pyramids in Egypt, to Times Square in New York City, people will gather to celebrate the turn of the calendar from 1999 to 2000.
“Bluff township has only 2,500 residents, but we expect 10,000 to 20,000 down there that weekend,” said Lou Harrison-Smith, chairman of Southland Millennium Ltd.
From Bluff in Southland province, visitors can watch last year's sunset disappear over the Tasman Sea to the west and then turn east a few hours later and watch the first sun of the new year rise over the Pacific.
Here, in case you are mentally (or bodily) chasing the entry of 2000 that evening, is a look at where some of the big parties will be.
• New York City: Even people quietly dozing away 1999 at home will tune in to see the 24-hour celebration in Times Square. Giant TV screens will be set up around the neighborhood, the better to watch 2000 as it enters the world's 24 time zones, starting in Fiji at 7 a.m. Eastern time.
• St. Petersburg, Russia: The former home of the czars is trying to bring back “the splendor of the imperial traditions” of the years before the 1917 revolution with a “Tsar's Ball” at the Catherine Palace.
• Sydney, Australia: Sydney is always in a partying mood, but no more so than in 2000, as the summer Olympics and Paralympics return Down Under. A 24-hour New Year's Eve party is planned, centered on Sydney Harbour.
• Rome: The Vatican will be celebrating the 2000th anniversary of Jesus' birth, with Pope John Paul II presiding over a church-wide Jubilee. A prayer vigil for the passage of the Year 2000 is planned at St. Peter's Basilica New Year's Eve, with a Mass celebrating the World Day of Peace on Jan. 1.
• Greenwich, England: New Year's Eve at the zero meridian, the place where the world's time officially begins, will be centered on the opening of the Millennium Dome, an entertainment and celebration complex.
• Taos, New Mexico: All One Tribe, a group whose name more or less tells its story, will drum in the mountains of northern New Mexico Dec. 31 and coordinate similar ceremonies around the world.
• Paris: Besides street and fireworks celebrations, there will be a flood of art in Paris, with the Grand Palais' show “Visions of the Future,” the reopening of the Centre George Pompidou after three years of renovation with a show devoted, appropriately, to “Time.”
• The Great Barrier Reef, Australia: Forty-five miles out on the Coral Sea from Port Douglas, 240 people will celebrate the coming of 2000 on a powered catamaran called Quicksilver Wavepiercer.
• The Great Pyramids at Giza, Egypt, outside Cairo: “The 12 Dreams of the Sun” festival features music and light shows.
• Fiji: This South Pacific nation will celebrate with “Fiji 2000,” fireworks, music and lots of tourists.
• Johannesburg, South Africa: In addition to the parties and free-flowing South African wine of the New Year's celebration, 150,000 Christians from more than 100 South African towns are expected as part of a worldwide March for Jesus.
• Hannover, Germany: Hannover will celebrate Jan. 1, but like European cities such as Berlin and London, it plans a full year of events. Expo 2000, with more than 165 countries represented, opens in Hannover June 1 and runs through Oct. 31.
• The Great Wall, China: Plans call for a millennial ball and a partial laser illumination of the 1,400-year-old wall from satellites in space.
• Vancouver, British Columbia: Events are planned in all 23 of the city's neighborhood centers, plus satellite TV links around the world, entertainment and midnight fireworks and laser show.
• Pretoria, South Africa: Orchestras and bands will fill the State Theatre for the Millennium Ball. Those still standing will watch the sunrise from the Opera House balconies.
• On the high seas: For $4,000 to $14,000 a person, Royal Caribbean's Legend of the Seas ship will cruise back and forth across the international date line to double its passengers' millennial thrill.
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