Happy New Year!

Prost Neujahr!

If it had been my choice, I’d probably have stayed home wrapped in a blanket with a cup of hot cocoa and a good old black-and-white movie to roll in the new year. But, after all, we are here to take advantage of opportunities, and we’d agreed to meet friends Henni and Hans and their daughter Maria downtown for Silvester, the German New Year’s Eve celebration.

So we bundled up in layers and layers of clothing (why didn’t we pack those long underwear?!) and rode the elevated train the 15 minutes downtown along with crowds of people swigging out of bottles and lighting firecrackers and in various stages of inebriation. I was continuing to have my doubts about the wisdom of our field trip.

Still, we drank hot mulled cider and cocoa at heated outdoor tables at a pub at Hackescher Markt while Hans and Jost and Hannes ran back and forth to put on a firework display from the little park across the street. Firecrackers are only legal on this one day of the year, but the ones they sell are the “real” old-fashioned U.S.-outlawed M-80 type—lots of bang for the euro!

Then we walked with the streaming crowds toward the Brandenburger Tor, the center of the German universe, where the official fireworks display would take place. We decided to take up position on a bridge over the Spree River beside the Reichstag, the German Parliament, and when the fireworks began we popped the corks on the champagne bottles and sparkling cider, sipped out of fluted plastic glasses, and toasted the cold, sparkling new year of 2008.

It turned out that the Reichstag was directly between us and the official fireworks display, which had to be shot low because of the fog, but everywhere we turned amateur pyrotechniacs were blasting off their own celebrations of fireworks so that we felt we were right in the middle of the display.

My camera was in my pocket the whole time,
but it was all too big to capture.
These photos are from the professionals.

Later we wandered through the city center, watching the amazing buildings of downtown Berlin illuminated and transformed by the flashing fireworks and the glowing fog and shadows. It was one of those long continuing moments in time when it all seems not quite real but of penetrating and beautiful intensity.

Anna fell asleep on the train on the way home and walked to the apartment between us with her eyes closed, stumbling over the piles of fireworks detritus and empty bottles on the sidewalks. Perhaps she made the better choice: dreams of glorious fireworks in the sky rather than glass shards and charred Chinese paper on the ground.