A word on New Year's Eve

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So I guess that we have discovered that if any culture knows how to ring in the New Year, hands down, the Germans take the cake! I think that I will never again in my life be a witness to such a city-wide all out party.

It was difficult to miss that the Germans take New Years Eve very seriously, and I am not joking when I say that it was an ALL out city party. Firstly, every store that is not a party location closes sometime in the very early afternoon. This made us a tad bit worried that we wouldn't be able to find a restaurant for dinner, but lucky for us, all the pubs were open for business.

We thought that it would be wise to take an afternoon nap prior to getting up for the fireworks as we had heard rumors of how crazy things tend to get around the city, and if there was any truth to what we were hearing, we thought things might get a little to loud to catch any sleep after midnight. We had to be up at 3:30 am to be at the airport on time, and that little nap turned out to be the last we slept until well into the next afternoon.

People started driking in the streets as all of the stores were closing in preparation for the celebrations. All day long it sounded like bombs were going off around the city, and later discovered that this was the result of small firecrackers being lit and thrown down on the streets (or at a neighbor in the group that you happened to be walking in, or at complete strangers like us Canadians...)

Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE buys fireworks on new years eve and sets them off wherever they see fit. I am not sure if the city even puts on a firework show, but the citizens are setting them off everywhere you look. When we made our way down to the river, we saw them being set off in the middle of the streets, and as the only thing holding them in place were pop bottles or cans, some went rougue and flew into the sides of the buildings. It was fortunate that most of the buildings are made of stone, so it had little impact where we were, but we did hear ambulances, fire trucks and police cars going by at least every few minutes for the majority of the evening.

The longer we were out, the thicker the smoke got. People were drinking, dancing, laughing and shouting in the streets as the sounds of the fireworks going off had me a little on edge. It was hard to take in everything that was all happening at once, but we did our best to capture some of it on camera and video. River cruise barges were tied up against the shores on the river and the fog horns were our midnight marker, followed by more shouting, people kissing, more fireworks and the party continued.

We made our way back to the hotel after witnessing people setting off fireworks aimed at other people and decided that it was probably best to head back to the hotel.

It was a crazy and memorable night to say the least 😊

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Photos

New Years at the River
all the boats at the river

Comments

[Hilda harder]

New years eve
Hey nic and Matt. We went to bed at ten o clock on new years eve. Didn't even watch celebrations on tv. Just one more year to us to enjoy our family and see their activities ! G g