Craziness

As you all know, Nick and I spent New Years Eve in Berlin and I have to tell you, it was probably the craziest celebration we have ever seen.

Aside from setting off as many fireworks as we possibly can, there are a few traditions that Germans practice on this holiday. One of them is that we eat round, filled donuts on December 31st. In northern Germany, they are called "Berliner"and the legend says that they were first made by a baker from Berlin. He wanted to serve in the army of Friedrich the great, but wasn't accepted as a soldier. Instead, he was given a job to cook in the field kitchen, where he created the "Berliner" to give thanks for this opportunity. He shaped them in the form of canon balls and because there was no oven, he fried them in hot oil.

2x egg nog filling, 2x champagne cream, 1x strawberry, 1x plum!

Whether this is true or not, we are all very thankful for someone coming up with this delicious creation! After baking, Berliner are filled with strawberry jam, plum jam, egg nogg, or champagne creme and then covered with chocolate or just plain sugar frosting. Some people make them their own, others (like me) buy them ready to eat at a bakery.

If you are throwing a New Years party and you are offering a good number of Berliners, you can also fill one of them with mustard. That always guarantees for a lot of fun!

As you can see, I know how to cut them perfectly
and leave only the least amount of filling on the other half. 

We finished all of them!

For dinner, many people here eat raclette (I will tell you more about that this week) or fondue. Other families have their own dinner traditions and make things like potato salad and hot dogs/ wieners.
We decided to just make whatever we liked. Hot dogs for Nick, peeled potatoes and sliced salmon for me.

So festive!

We had only bought a few fireworks, but still struggled to fit all of them into the backpacks.

I don't remember when our neighbors started their fireworks, but I heard the first loud bang around noon. By the 8pm, rockets were flying off balconies and quarter sticks were landing in the middle of the intersection in front of the house. I have to admit that I was convinced that by midnight, nobody would have any fireworks lefts.

We left around 9:30pm and went to two different neighborhoods before going to our final destination, the main train station. On our little tour, we met some interesting people who not only traded vodka for two of our rockets, but also wanted to sell us Polish firecrackers, which, let me just tell you, are the loudest thing I have ever heard. I don't even know if they are legal. Once those guys threw them down the subway entrance, we knew it was time to leave.

Fortunately though, they showed Nick how to appropriately set rockets off right from your hand. I'm too attached to my fingers, both emotionally and physically, and passed on this wonderful opportunity to risk my hands, but he loved it. Scary times. Thankfully, nothing happened and everyone went home without losing extremities.

At the train station, we were able to find an amazing spot that allowed us to see the official fireworks at the Brandenburg gate, while still setting off our own fireworks, and watching thousands of people do the same thing. It was really cool.

Happy New Year!

Don't believe that the party ended there. Well, it did for us, but we heard fireworks throughout the next day. People here are unstoppable!

I can't wait to see what the new year has in store for us!