Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Silvester & Feuerwerk

'Silvester' is how to say New Year's Eve in German. But the more important word to know for this particular holiday is 'Feuerwerk'--fireworks!!!
Apparently everyone and their grandma has piles of fireworks and starting Christmas Eve and continuing through to New Year's Day, they set them off in the streets, off their balconys, in the middle of tram tracks and wherever else they goddamn please at all hours of the day and night.
This means that we were treated not only to our own personal fireworks show with big pretty explosions right off our balcony, but also to periodic (and ever-more-frequent) loud and ominous bangs echoing through the neighborhood for a week straight.
I'd been told that NYE itself is like a warzone--crazy drunk people wandering the streets with armfuls of fireworks and firing them off at passers-by, fireworks landing on one's head from the balconies and roofs above, etc. This proved true when, walking to the bus station to head to our house party of choice, two drunk men pointed fireworks directly at us and some innocent women nearby. When we yelled, they retreated down the street a bit, only to fire distance missiles at us, one nearly hitting one of the other women. It was nuts!
At the party, we watched from a top floor balcony as the entire skyline burst into life at midnight. The noise was cacophonus. Fireworks were everywhere. It was beautiful...even, dare I say, magical. Soon someone thrust 'fireworks' that looked suspiciously like dynamite into our hands and we tossed them into the street with wild abandon. Just like the locals!
Later we trekked through the snow to a big party at the Neukölln Brauerei. Having paid 5eur to get in we were pretty disappointed when the music and dancefloors kinda sucked. But we found a display of free tropical fruit and decided it would all be worth it if we each stole 5eur worth of fruit. That's how I ended up walking home with two pineapples stuffed down the front of my jacket and how some poor sap who made the mistake of pelting Josh with a snowball got a pear thrown at him in return (Josh does not remember that happening, but I have witnesses). Also we still have a cracked honeydew melon, which came home in the hood of Clayton's jacket, nestled into our balcony snow.
I didn't take many photos but here's a sampling.
Clayton pulled our magnum out of the balcony snowdrift (see two posts ago) and popped the cork into the cold night air:

It left a champagne-shaped hole in our snow which has since been covered over:

We enjoyed posing with the magnum for various photos. My outfit was very shiny:

And here's a short video of a firework exploding right in front of our balcony:

I stand by our decision not to go to an overpriced club night...we had a really fun and crazy night for less than 10eur each!
Bis bald,
D.

1 comment:

  1. I second the not expensive new years celebration! drunken amusement with friends and eventually carson daly on tv is LOVELY.

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