Joe and I got home around 5pm from Berlin tonight. We anticipated a
relatively quiet night, with dinner and drinks at home, and then a
walk to the bridge at midnight to watch fireworks. The cracks and pops
started around 6pm. Some of them sounded like there were exploding
inside our building. It was just a small pre-curser of what was to
come!

Around 11:30pm we heated up some Glühwein, filled the thermos, and set
out for the bridge. We had been told that everyone goes there at
midnight to enjoy fireworks, so I assumed that we would be able to see
the displays of several different towns from there. How totally wrong
I was.

As we walked down the street, our favorite bar/café was totally empty.
This should have been a clue, but I was assuming (wrongly) that
everyone did what Americans do on New Year’s Eve – flood the bars and
drink themselves to oblivion. Instead, Germans prefer amateur
fireworks. Specifically, professional-quality bottle rockets.

The first one I paid particular attention to went off right onto the train tracks. Ouch, I thought. That can’t be safe. Then several were lit underneath the bridge.
Hmmm…that also doesn’t seem like the best choice. My neighbors were
lighting them off their balcony. The closer we got to midnight, the
more bottle rockets were lit. It was unbelieveable! There was a constant rumble of explosions, some of them making it gloriously into the night air,
while others exploded (successfully or not, depending on your
perspective) right in front of our faces. Everywhere you turned, near
and far, the fireworks were exploding. We were shoulder to shoulder
with most of the town of Freiburg, each one prepared to bid farewell
to 2011 with their personal selection of explosives. Out of Champaign
bottles, beer bottles, in the middle of the street, between parked
cars, by kids, by adults. There was no count down to midnight. Just
thousands of pyromaniacs, lighting individual celebrations out of
bottles as fast as they could, in the pouring rain no less.

We were totally surrounded by exploding fireworks. It was actually
really beautiful and totally amazing…if you suspended all concern for
safety. Better than any professional display I have ever witnessed.

The video here was taken after midnight. It is not the best quality, unfortunately, as I was trying to get a 360 view as quickly as possible to keep the camera out of the rain, and the bridge structure blocks some of the view. However, if you listen to all of the explosions, and look into the distance as well as close by, you can get a small feeling of the unbelievable quantity of fireworks being lit.

Silvester on the bridge – video clip click here.

To close out the evening, we watched “Dinner for One”, a 20 minute
skit that has been playing on German television every New Year’s at
12:30am since 1963. It is the story of Miss Sophie’s 90th birthday
party. She has outlived all of her friends, so the butler “sits in”
for each of her 4 imaginary guests and he gets progressively
inebriated as he drinks toasts for all four guests during the
multi-course meal. Pretty funny actually. Watch it yourself! (click here)

“Same procedure as every year.”

Willkommen 2012! Shönes neues Jahr!