As it’s our first year as mommy & daddy we decided to forego our usual Silvester Bash and spend a quiet night at home welcoming the new year with our little mouse…it didn’t quite happen that way…
…from 5pm – 3am we had our very own crashbangshakethewindows light show presented in surround sound, both in front and behind our building. erm…yay?
Without further ado….may I present:
A Quiet New Years Eve in Berlin –
Fireworks can be sold legally in Germany from Dec. 29th until Dec. 31st. The flyers arrive the day after Christmas….
you can buy them in D.I.Y stores…
you can buy them in (the many) Firework shops that crop up & are open for the 3 legal days and then disappear as if they never were…
you can even conveniently buy some along with your milk in the supermarket…
…right next to the fire extinguishers!
Luckily there’s a minimum age requirement for purchasing fireworks: 14 years old…whew I was worried there for minute…but hey…14 is a super responsible-with-fire-and-explosives-age, right? Just like 16 is a totally ingenious legal drinking age…uh huh…
Let’s take anotherlook outside:
and now onto another German tradition that involves fire and metal:
Bleigiessen: New Years Eve custom of fortune telling the shadows of the shapes made from dropping molten lead into cold water!
Yipee! Let’s get started:
Open the package and reveal your lucky to-be-melted objects: an elephant,1000 ton weight, pig, mushroom, wine bottle & dog.
*Good thing the melting-stuff-spoon has the HAND end labeled otherwise we’d never know which end to hold….
Pile a few of your to-melt-shapes onto the spoon and hold ’em over a candle until they’re liquified! Dump the stinky mess into a bowl of cold water & fish out the resulting hunk of metal…
Hold it up to a light & see what you can see in the shadow…a cat? man? or maybe a cow?
an ostrich? or possibly a woman with an up-do?
– whatever you see in the shadow should have a corresponding fortune on the back of the package or online. Apparently our fortunes for 2012 are renewed love & a healed illness. Good to know…
Outside the stupidity fun continues with morons revelers setting off fireworks in the middle of the street
…and literally shooting fireworks down the sidewalk as people try to walk by…
…this bus actually ran the red light to escape the firework shot at it…seriously…amazingly…moronic
The ones that actually went up were sure purty though…
…by the end of the night we had seen over 30 of these speed by…
The next morning the air still stank of burning stupidity & the streets were covered with dreck…
ew…
even this little Christmas tree didn’t escape the carnage of idiocracy…
At least our traditional Silvester Pfannekuchen (plum filled new year’s donuts) were yummy!
check out more of my Life in Germany here
I wish here in the U.S. all people did was shoot fireworks on New Year’s eve. They are illegal most places where I live and only sold on the 4th of July where they are legal. Some big shopping areas had fireworks for those who wanted to travel. Here, fools with firearms take to the streets shooting randomly into the air (or wherever-I’ve no idea since I stay inside wherever I am until the next day!) All I heard until 1:30 am was gunfire of all sorts, and a few random car alarms!
We definitely shake our heads in disbelief at the sheer stupidity of the gun laws, racism, xenophobia, religious zealots, assbackwards illogical thought processes (wtf is with fox news??) and insane republican idiocy in the U.S. 🙁
Wow! I thought the UK and their fireworks usage was bad! Luckily you have to be a little older to buy fireworks here..I think :/
The little, melty-tell-your-future set looks cool thought! And the plum doughnuts sound delicious!!!
It really is completely crazy here with the age limit for fireworks…although stupidity with fire appears to have no age restriction 😉
*even worse though is the fact that Germany driving licenses are valid FOREVER…take a peek at the hilariously terrifying tale that occured outside of our window: https://awesomesauceasshattery.com/2011/07/08/why-road-signs-exist/
I love love love your stories about Germany! I have been scrolling through your blog a little and I think it’s just so funny to read things from a different point of view. And those fireworks… They’re just annoying. I don’t even touch those things, neither do any of my friends. Why waste money on something that is loud and obnoxious and might even hurt someone? Two years ago on New Year’s Eve some guys shot some fireworks right in my direction. Nothing happened but it was so close.
Either way, when I was in the US, I was kind of disappointed when everybody stayed inside in front of the TV at 12 am to watch some big clock in NYC… Erm.. Isn’t that weird, too? 😀
We are definitely getting out of the city for this New Year’s Eve…Berlin isn’t a very nice place to live on a “normal” day but during Silvester it is particularly awful… 🙁
*I was at the New Year’s ball drop in Times Square twice (in my younger days) and it was awesome, absolutely something to experience if you get a chance! 😉
hilarious! naples also has insane new year’s fireworks. a big favorite are basically like bombs, that make a huge explosion noise (making your house shake) but without anything nice to look at. when midnight strikes, people know to take cover because there are always people blowing their hands off or accidentally shooting fireworks into other people’s balconies. that bit about the melting lead is pretty fascinating… never heard of that before! 🙂 lisa
New Years is absolutely insane…I know all about the house-quaking-explosions as well and you definitely want to stay indoors here too…so many idiots shooting fireworks at each other, cars, basically anything on the streets after dark…moronic to say the least…