Prost Neujahr

I feel so lucky to have experienced a German New Years.  I had NO idea that the straight laced, quiet hour between 1 and 3, no washing your cars on Sundays, Germans would know how to put on a show like they did.  The fireworks were awesome!  Everywhere in our little village people were shooting off fireworks and rockets as quickly as possible.  They had empty wine bottles lined up and were dropping lit rockets into bottles as fast as they could.  The church bells loudly chimed for 20 minutes at midnight.  Our entire village was lit and the houses rattled from the booms in the sky.  With the village being in a little valley, the sounds just bounced around.  The boys said they would need earplugs for future New Years celebrations.

Darin and the 2 oldest boys went down the street to get a better view of all the fireworks, and I stayed inside with the sleeping little ones and the windows on both sides of the house opened.  They watched several fireworks going astray and blowing up as they hit a neighboring house.  While I watched out the window at our neighbors.  I thought for sure that they (younger ones across the street not the older ones next door) were going to blow themselves up.  They were tossing firecrackers everywhere.  One of the bigger rockets got lit, then knocked over, and ended up hitting their car parked on the road. Not to mention that it came within a foot of their friend.  I laughed and laughed.  I couldn't believe how long the fireworks went on for.  The U.S. of A will need to bump up their July 4th celebrations in order to compete with a German New Years. 

After things started to slow down a bit and our neighbors ran out of fireworks, Darin and the boys went to light our own little sparkling fountains (almost embarrassing!).  Then the neighbors and their friends came across the street wine bottles and glasses in hand to offer handshakes and New Years Wishes.   It was so fun.  Prost NeuJahr!  They offered us wine, but provided us with the kinder wine instead. We then sat and "talked" to them for quite awhile.  It was a very memorable Neu Jahr.  I couldn't stop smiling when I thought about how the Germans celebrated and how soundly my 3 little ones slept.

As a side note:  Fireworks were sold everywhere.  They are the big ones that Utah just barely allowed this past year.  I could buy (but didn't because I didn't know if our village would be doing fireworks-silly me- thus the little fountains) a large box with about 20 big shots for about 19 euro. Next year we will be fully participating!