Happy New Year, German style

Sunday, December 31

We rang in the new year from our house on the Mosel.  Shirley made a large beef roast and we had a great feast with mashed potatoes, tossed salad with home-made blue cheese dressing. 

Our New Year's Eve banquet at the Mosel Airbnb house

Donovan and Jess had warned us that Germans REALLY get in to celebrating the new year.  Throughout the prior evening and Sunday afternoon, we had heard an occasional fire cracker go off.  But I really wasn't prepared for what happened as the clock struck midnight:  Our sleepy little hamlet and the village across the river exploded with fireworks.  These were not organized, municipal events, but rather individual families and neighborhood-level events.  They put the U.S. Fourth of July to shame as nonstop explosions and light filled the air for the next 30 minutes.

We watched from our patio looking out across the river at the village of Enkirch.  As things began to die down, I headed for bed.  When I got to the front of the house, I discovered that things were still going strong on the street in front of our house.  Perhaps in part because the road was closed just beyond because of the flood waters, the street in front of our place was filled with young (and drunk) people shooting off more fireworks.

Fireworks across the Mosel River

Fireworks leftover all over the streets

The next morning, the remnants of the revelry were everywhere.  As I drove through Traben-Trarbach around 9 the next morning, city crews were out picking up the shell casings from the night before.  Later in the day, I came across similar leftovers in Trier.