A German New Year's Eve Celebration

Last night was only the second time we have been in German for the new year.  The other was our first year here, and we spent the evening alone at home; this year we were invited to a friend's house and really enjoyed the time and a bit of German tradition.

Much like at a typical at home celebration in the US, we started off with some drinks and then moved into a dinner.  One of the traditional German dinners for New Years Eve is cheese fondue, we had a slight variation of that with another melted cheese type item, raclette.  The table was all decked out with lucky items for the new year, money themed napkins and little "gluckschwein" (lucky pigs) for everyone.

After dinner, we all settled down to partake in a uniquely German new year's eve tradition, watching the British comedy sketch called "Dinner for One"  This is shown, in English, every New Year's Eve in Germany and is consequently the record holder for most repeated television broadcast.  No one seems to be able to explain to me WHY this is mandatory viewing in Germany on NYE, but it seems to be!  It was cute, but I think must be funnier if you have already had a few drinks.  Here is an article which discusses the show's traditional airing in Germany and has a link to watch it on youtube if you are interested.

www.thelocal.de/20131231/16465

By the time the show was over, it was nearly midnight.  This time we were expecting what we learned on our first New Year's Eve here:  a huge number of fireworks exploding all around at midnight.  Yes, on New Year's Eve, the normally quiet, reserved, waste adverse and safety obsessed Germans do a complete and total 180.  They launch insane amounts of very large and loud fireworks, with essentially no safety precautions, taking over local streets.

While there were a few random fireworks being set off here and there from about 6:00 pm on, the big celebration starts at midnight.  For a full 35 minutes it was NONstop with LARGE fireworks as well as smaller ones, Roman candles, etc in every direction as far as you can see.  At any one time there were at least 5 large explosions in the sky, and many smaller ones at ground level or smaller bottle rockets, and often 10 or more going off.  The streets were filled with people and debris from already shot off rockets, and more go off by the second.  Just on the one block long street we were on, there were over a dozen groups of people launching things (often using the empty champagne bottle from midnight toasts to launch them from, though others had entire cases of bottles set up to do multi rocket launches), and of course all of the streets around us were doing the same and the sky was lit with it all.  I have never seen so many fireworks for so long ANYwhere else, not even at Disney World.

Here is one image I got about 20 minutes in that shows just one direction looking down the street, and several going off at the exact moment the camera snapped.  I am surprised there is not anything IN the street, though I guess that was more looking the other direction.

After 35 minutes of this insanity, there was another good half hour of less intensity and then the final fireworks were still going off now and again until three or four in the morning.  It is really an all out celebration, and mayhem that is hard to describe, and that is so very different than the otherwise orderly Germans.  It is something to be experienced, for sure.

Today, I reached back to our American roots and made sure we had black eyed peas with lunch!

Wishing you all a healthy and happy 2014,

Hadley