Saturday, January 05, 2008

Der Auld Lang Syne...

Another year has come and gone and what have we learned? Well, on New Year's Eve we learned that Germans are absolutely obsessed with fireworks. We went to a party near Schwetzingen, 10 minutes or so from our house (thanks Layne and Douglas, it was a blast). At midnight, we went out into this purely residential area and were treated to everybody and their brother setting off every type of consumer pyrotechnic imagineable.

New Year's also gave us a chance to see a rare flash of consumerism in the German populace. Fireworks were on sale everywhere and many places had lines. I at least in part credit the relative lack of wood construction for this mass appeal. You could build a bonfire on most German (tile) rooves and they'd simply thank you for the free heat.
I took my camera but not the tripod so the night shots aren't technically great, but look pretty cool anyway. We stayed until around 2:00 but heard the party continued until 6:00 or so. Props to the others' stamina -- by the time we left, my brain was floating in a puddle of stale beer and I would have traded my left hand for a place to crawl into and sleep. Luckily, B got me home before such brutal bartering was necessary.

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