Theoretically spending New Years at the worlds best place

First off, let me say I haven’t posted any pictures, aside from the few I’ll add to this entry. My previous experiences with posting pictures were when I would sit out and post using the free wireless in the square by my work. It’s too cold for that at this point and while I may try to do it from an internet café, I need to figure out some logistics first. Technical Difficulties R Us, but depending if you’ve read the big announcement yesterday, you would know that high-speed internet in the comfort of a heated home is three weeks away and I can guarantee them at least at that point.

Click here for the link to my facebook photo album of New Years


Anyways, New Years in Berlin. We were informed by Kim’s mom, who had apparently seen this on the news or something, that Berlin, specifically the Brandenburg Gate, is the best place in the world to spend New Years Eve. Considering I always thought that Time Square always won that distinction, I was quite impressed that we happen to be in Berlin at this time of year, so celebrating there was a must.

As I mentioned before Berlin was cold. I cannot express this enough. Being that the celebrations were outside and Kim and I not being one’s to have patience or forthright thinking that this would be a popular spot, we opted not to spend hours in the cold. Instead we went to dinner with her boyfriend, Jesco, where he warned us about crazy Berlin New Years celebrations and tried to explain why he wouldn’t want to join us. Apparently not only was this going to be crowded but he told us about the desire many a-Berliners had to throw firecrackers out on the street, from apartments, from the sidewalks, from train stations- anywhere. We thought he was exaggerating, so we bundled up in many layers and made our way to the gate.

We walked to the U-bahn station and noticed that yes, there were many, many firecrackers being lit in dangerous and inappropriate ways. As we climbed the stairs we noticed some American guys throwing them off the stations platform to the street below, scaring pedestrians below.

It became clear that maybe Jesco was right, from every direction people were setting off firecrackers. We joked that if one closed their eyes they could imagine themselves in WWII Berlin, firecrackers could be mistaken for gunshots and Jen could be seen running for her life.

But we trooped on. We got to our station and ascended onto the street only to be faced with even more firecrackers as well as many displays of public drunkenness. We refused to let go of our goal, and with New Years only half an hour away, we proceeded to the gate. As we reached the main street leading to it we became educated in the rules of firecrackers, on the street, which cars were blocked from, was where you lit firecrackers and fireworks, stay on the sidewalk and you were safe… well, safer. Except one family was not aware of this and had taken up residence on one corner to throw firecrackers at anyone passing by, what was more fun was that their young children would walk around freely, often narrowly being missed by a firecracker.

As we continued to our goal we came to a crowd and were stopped behind a police barricade. With only 10 minutes to new years we were going nowhere. We would find out later that apparently the park had gotten full and they were letting in no more people, so we spent New Years behind the gate counting down with people of many different nations, counting backwards in different languages and saddened that we did not reach our goal. I must admit, although we missed the official fireworks display of Brandenburg Gate because it was hidden behind a building, the display put on by those walking the streets was quite nice as well, definitely a better way to spend the new years than the lack of fireworks we get in Vancouver.

About 5 minutes after midnight they let us through the barricade, only to stop us about half a block later by another one. We tried to charm some police, but that didn’t work, so we worked our way back through the crowds, dodging fireworks and empty bottles, back to the u-bahn and into the apartment.

Although we didn’t technically spend our New Years at the official Brandenburg Gate celebration, I do think we did theoretically since the gate and the fireworks were in view while we hugged each other a happy new year.

And that’s the story of how I spent my New Years 2009 at one of the best places to celebrate in the world.