January 28th, 2017
Ringing in the New Year is quite the experience in Germany. I think its equal parts excitement, thrill and madness! Being our second year here, we weren’t taken by surprise at the utter craziness that seems to dominate this typically quiet and structured society one night a year. Having survived our first New Years Eve, we felt much more seasoned and even decided to participate a bit this time around.
Fireworks can be purchased all over the place, including our village grocery store. Milk? check. Yogurt? check. Fruit? check. Fireworks? check! We picked up sparklers, snappers, and a few small fireworks during the last week of December. Some of the displays we saw were rather large and the names on the packages were quite humorous (or honest)! The “Pyro Family” pack anyone?
Mein Mann REALLY wanted to get something bigger but the thought of possibly blowing up body parts made me completely leery, especially when the directions are all in German. I was pretty adamant that we should stick to the smaller stuff. He eventually found a box-shaped firework on one of his trips to the grocery store and went with the philosophy …“It’s better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.” It looked to have several small fireworks inside with a fuse on the outside. He also purchased a long-tipped lighter to practice fire safety…our middle ground!
We invited our friend, Liz and her three-year old daughter to our house for New Years Eve. We played games, the kids watched movies, we chatted away the hours and ate. We didn’t expect the kids to actually stay awake until midnight so we lit sparklers earlier.
We also used up our stash of snappers and smaller fireworks.
As midnight approached, we began to hear fireworks fill the sky. To our surprise, all THREE kids were still awake! The chocolate brownies I made that evening might have played a part in keeping them going. As the clock ticked down the remaining minutes of 2016, we bundled up and headed outside with our noisemakers. 2017 came in with a BANG!!! The sky was lit up in all directions and the church bells were joyously ringing in the New Year. It was AMAZING (and a little scary)! When Mein Mann lit the box firework he purchased, we were shocked to see the number of fireworks that shot out, how high they went up into the sky and the size of the explosions. We BOTH wished he had gotten more!
Click on the following link to see a short video I took. A firework exploded right over our heads at the beginning that completely surprised us…thus my screaming! You’ll hear the church bells too! IMG_5300
We enjoyed the numerous, neighborhood fireworks shows and celebrated to our hearts content! It was sooooo…much…FUN!!!!
Things didn’t settle down in our village for at least an hour, with remnants of celebrations lasting much longer. The adrenaline rush pulsed through our veins for a while enabling our boys to stay up longer than ever before. We were shocked! They were quite proud of themselves…before they passed out that is!
We spent the first day of the New Year at home…what was left of it after sleeping in! We played our new game, Beat the Parents, from Grammy Julie (Thanks Grammy!). Notice how our boys like to use their own game pieces. Ha, Ha!
The boys also asked for a new car track on the rug. We’ve been using painter’s tape tracks for years and I love that they still enjoy it!
The next day, Mein Mann brought home a Neujahrsbrezel for us all to share. This traditional treat is slightly sweet and thought to bring good luck and prosperity if it’s the first thing you eat in the New Year. We didn’t learn this until later so it was not our first meal of the New Year but that’s okay. We already feel so fortunate to have each other, for our family, the incredible community we have of friends near and far and getting to live here in Germany.
I now have one-hundred posts that capture the roller-coaster ride we buckled ourselves in for when we said “yes” to this adventure. Thanks for checking in on us here and encouraging us along the way. May your New Year be full of gratitude, happiness, joy, love, and peace.
In this New Year, may we all welcome the foreigners in our midst because it is REALLY HARD to be the stranger. Strangers come with stigmas no matter where you are. Receiving a smile, a kind word (even when spoken in another language) or an offer to help goes a long way…further than you might think. Faces and hands that welcome you in foreign lands are unforgettable. Trust me.
Frohes Neues Jahr (Happy New Year!)
