Silvester

Happy New Year's Eve, folks.  Or "Silvester" as it is known here.  An expat friend clued me in on that odd name a couple of months ago and I had to look into it because, well...huh?!?  Who?!? Why?!? I discovered it's named for Saint Sylvester, some old pope dude.  I guess he died on December 31st so today is his feast day.  Lucky Sly.


(Fun Fact: Our Scottish friends call New Year's Eve "Hogmanay". Who knew?! We're becoming so worldly.)


Silvester is HUGE here.  I had been warned.  Mostly from families with young kids like ours who have been here for New Year's Eve in the past and have resolved to get out of this town because it is crazy.  It is only 8:30 p.m. here and I understand why. 


Madness.  It sounds like a war out there. 


Fireworks are legal tonight and they started selling them everywhere as soon as Christmas was over.  You don't have to go to the border of the city limits to purchase them on the down low like "we" (not me) did at home.  You just impulse-buy them in line at the grocery store.  Big ones.  And now everyone and their mother is shooting them off all over town.  Some folks just across the street out our living room window have these gigantic, legit, you-see-the-same-ones-at-a-fireworks-show fireworks that they've been lighting all evening.  I wonder how much money they've blown up so far. 


I'm already planning where I'm going next year.  I'm not staying here for this.  Midnight is hours away yet. 


We've never really been big New Year's Eve people.  The kids at 9, 7, and 5 don't seem super excited about the idea of staying up till midnight yet.  And I sure don't.  I'm old and boring.  Maybe when they're a bit older, maybe when they learn they beauty of "sleeping in" we can celebrate a Berlin Silvester.  But next year?  I'm outta here.  I just sat here laughing with Jason after we tucked the kids into bed tonight.  It's almost unbelievable how noisy it is, and I knew we wouldn't believe it till we "saw" it.  Well now we know.  Lesson learned.


Jason's boss was mentioning to me at the Christmas party that their office is a popular spot on New Year's Eve.  It's on the 10th floor with a great view and floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall windows.  You could see the happs all across Berlin from there.



Now that I have an idea just how hard sleeping might be tonight, I sort of wish we had made plans to head over there. Although we have also been warned to "stay inside" because of all these crazy people just shooting fireworks around all willy nilly, it's not necessarily safe.  And the crowds, I'm sure.  My small children could easily be trampled as we nearly learned at the Fall of the Wall celebration in November.


Fourth of July, an obvious day for pyrotechnics, for example, was annoying back home in the 'burbs where fireworks are illegal.  Facebook friends were always all, "Won't my [one set] of neighbors with the teenagers stop shooting off fireworks so I can go to sleep?  It's 11:00 p.m.  My dog is scared."  Peeps, I live in the city now.  A huge city.  A "young" city (duh, Berlin is super old, it's just full of all these young, vibrant people.)  Where fireworks are not illegal today.  And the real fireworks displays won't start until midnight.  It's going to be insane.  I mean, I was here for the World Cup win.  This is going to be so much more!!!  It already is.  Aaaaaaah! 


The Hoff is here tonight, singing at the Brandenburg Gate. 

You know how the Germans love Hoff.  (What's not to love, really? ;) )  They're all down at the Tor right now being all, "It's going to be legend --wait for it-- DARY!"


2015 is still hours away and I can only imagine how crazy loud it's going to get then. 


Friends, I'm scared. :)


But Happy New Year!  Oh wait, I'm in Germany: Frohes neues Jahr!!!  2014 was such a huge year for our family, I'm excited to see what 2015 has in store.  Once the madness of tonight is over. 

Stay tuned.