So, as promised, I am finishing up the initial post about our New Year’s Eve celebration here in rural Germany. I wish I had tales of grandeur for our plans that night to tell you, like hanging out in Berlin with the Techno Viking and watching the famous (over here) countdown, but all in all it was quite a quiet night. And besides, the featured act at the countdown in Berlin was ‘the Rednex’, which was popular in the States about 15 years ago, so we were in for a more entertaining treat (as you will soon see).
The evening went something like this:
We originally had plans to have some friends over for dinner, and then we were hoping to hit up some drinking/eating establishment (to do the ‘count down’ with other humans, so that we would feel like we were somehow connected (in some strange way) to the human race. But, this wasn’t to happen. After our friends completely cancelled when they heard our hopes of hitting up a bar for a ‘count down’, dinner was called off. They apparently don’t usually like to “do New Year’s??”
So, after I returned from buying some fireworks (see the previous blog for a pic of my find) at “Aldi SÜD” (Sud means SOUTH in German - they denote which region of the ‘Aldi’ chaing you are shopping at here?) - yes, this is the same grocery store they have in Chicago - the wife arrived home and broke the news that nobody felt like doing anything that night. She knew of a party with people from work that was nearby, but we really were feeling couped up lately (with all the FOG and not really being able to go anywhere far), and so we opted to think of other options that involved actually putting ourselves in a situation to try and meet new people (and experience German culture). But sadly, once again, the FOG prevented us from doing much.
In the end - Yes, we did end up going to an establishment, but it ended up being the usual spot in town (El Torro Center - Take the Kick), the tiny pub down the street from us. Not that this is a bad place (and the people there are quite funny to hang out with), but we can walk 100 feet any night and ‘Take the Kick’ at that place. I was hoping to maybe meet some Germans, experience how their culture rings in the coming of a New Year, and also maybe make some new friends…but this would have to wait (although we did end up meeting a few new people!).
Anyhow, I walk in from Aldi’s with my fireworks, and we proceed to talk about plans (or lack thereof) for the night. “No one feels like doing anything..” she says. So, after some discussion, and agreeance that the weather was again getting REALLY BAD with the FOG, we left it at this: dinner (with just me and the wife), bowling with our lame friends who wanted to be in by 10PM that evening, and then we would end up going down to the local pub about 100 ft. from our house. THAT was the PLAN….sorry - I didn’t want to bring the camera out that night, so I have no pics of the evening, other than the one I posted in the previous blog!
So, after we had a nice steak dinner, we headed off to the bowling alley. We bowled until about 9:3oPM (the wife and I TIED with a pitiful score of 111 for the first game, and she won the second game 112-106), and we ran into another friend of our’s named Sam. Sam is a 20 year old kid from Indiana. A nice kid, rather quite, but funny. So, since our other groups of friends had a bed time before 12AM that night, we asked Sam if he wanted to come back with us to the pub and hang out. Even though he had ‘vertigo’ (dizziness from fluid in his ear), he decided to go along and ‘take the kick’. I was pleased. I must say that I don’t understand the attitude of some other people sometimes. I mean, if you are old or have kids I can see it, but we have the unique oppurtunity to be living in a foreign country, and New YEar’s Eve only comes, well, ONCE A YEAR! Why not get out and see how they do it here? Why not be adventureous and do something different? I dunno….that part about people I will never understand, especially for 19-21 year old kids!?!? Heck, I am an old man, but I always manage to try something new? I wanna see how things are done here before I leave!
Sorry for the rant…anyhow, back to our friend Sam. Sam decided, to his credit, to come back and go out with us in the ‘hood. We have a complete guest bedroom (hint…hint…for those of you that wish to visit!?), so Sam was going to refrain from driving (he said he had to cover one eye to be able to see straight with his medical condition, so that was probably a smart move), and spend the night at our place.
Adter leaving the bowling alley, the lame crowd went their seperate way, and we all piled into the car and went to our place. The FOG was thick and it was quite dangerous driving home, so we decided that staying local was definitely the best decision for the night. Once we got home, Sam threw in a frozen pizza to the oven (he had originally came to the grill at the bowling alley to get some food when we ran into him), and we broke out the old Chess board. Yep, the CHESS board. The wife and I have been attempting to broaden our horizons a bit, and also challenge our mental acuity a bit more, so we have taken up playing Chess together. She has a nice set from back when we lived in Chicago that we brought, and so one night we broke it out.
So, Sam used to be in a Chess Club, and he and the wife played a match together while I watched. After about 10 minutes, you could tell that Sam plays a lot of Chess (and the wife is just getting back into it), and Sam won the match pretty easily. After the game (and Sam finished his pizza), we headed off to ‘El Torro Center’ - to “take the kick” (as the sign states).
We walked into the bar to find a less than stellar crowd. Most of the locals there appeared to have been drinking for hours, so you could tell they were in the mood to have fun! Which was a nice change of pace from the boring night we had had so far. Oh, and not to backtrack, but we have become fairly good friends with the owners of the pub, so we wrapped up a box of candy we bought, and we planned to give it to them as a gift of goodwill for the upcoming new year.
In a way I felt bad - I think they were expecting a huge crowd - they had streamers, some snacks all over the bar in bowls, lots of drinks stocked for big crowds, but not many people were there when we got there at 11PM. Normally on weekends the bar is incredibly packed, but apparently the FOG had scared people from driving that night? Anyhow, we proceeded to give the gift to Eva, the owner’s wife, and she was a bit surprised but happy to receive the candy. “Ewww….American chocolate…the best”, she said, which is funny because we think it sucks compared to the German and Belgian chocolates we have had over here so far! So, she claimed she was going on a diet from the holidays, but somehow she managed to twist her own arm, and the box was almost gone by the end of the night!
After Eva received the gift and tried a few pieces, it was a round of shots and drinks for all of us on the house as a sign of gratitude. At this point it was about 11:40 at that time - we chatted with Thomas (the owner) for a few minutes, and he proclaimed “What’s that….poison?”, then laughed. It was hard to tell if he thought we were trying to posion him because we were American (he has this weird tone about him at times when he’s cranky), or he meant that NOT eating chocolate keeps him healthy? Either way, he refused, so we passed the box of chocolates down the bar to the other 10-12 people hanging out.
Thomas the owner was in “rare form” that night - usually he is fairly quiet, sitting on his bar stool (while his wife does all the work) like a ‘bump on a log’. Occasionally he will come over and chat with us, but sometimes I think he would rather talk with Germans. Tonight it was obvious that Thomas was ‘lit’. He went from the quiet, old man, to the dancing, Saturday Night Fever (arm gesturing and disco dancing), Karaokee KING! It was a riot…if he wasn’t dancing, he was running the Karaokee machine and singing songs (that were obvious American hits with German words instead….that was a trip in and of itself to hear), and pouring drinks for people and constantly smiling. Oh, and to back track again, Sam is a big fireworks nut, so that is another reason he came by to hang out with us that night.
We originally had left my fireworks at home, and our plan was to run back to the house @ 12:01AM and blow the works off in the Fuerwuehr (firehouse) parking lot across the street. Well, all of the sudden at about 11:45PM, as we are watching the German countdown show from Berlin, we see Eva come running out of the back room with a HUGE box of fireworks of her own (after she had poured everyone a glass of rose and white champagne - yes, 2 glasses each?). Once we saw that, Sam and I asked if they minded us bringing my fireworks over, and so we ran back to the house and grabbed the bags of what I had bought.
It’s really quite strange over here sometimes. I don’t believe they have any holiday that is bigger than New Year’s Eve over here? Maybe I am just being an ignorant American, but Christmas was really not much of anything here? I overheard someone at a gas station saying he came back from vacation early just to make sure he got fireworks for his kids and NYE? I overheard him talking to the cashier and asked him “Fireworks? When do they do fireworks? (I had forgotten New Year’s Eve was coming up)” and he replied “Is this your first New Year’s Eve here?”. “Yes”, I replied. He said “Oh, wait until you see it…this is their big night.” So, that is what tipped me off to go and buy some.
Anyhow, back to the El Torro Center (sorry about the diversion)! Sam and I got back to the pub with our fireworks, just as Eva had proceeded to line the sidewalk (which is about 3 feet from the bars front door!) with a host of rockets, ‘batteries’ of things that shoot off fireworks, and other crazy stuff. I simply added mine to her row of things to blow up, and Sam I began to light off anything that was just a ‘loud and annoying’ type. We saved the fireworks that actually have some visual benefit for Eva to do with her ’show’. At about 10 seconds to midnight, with the door to the bar propped open (it was FREEZING out!), we hear everyone on TV and in the bar shouting “Tzehn, Neun, Acht, Sieben….” counting down in German from ten. I join in, the wife and Sam look at me like I am nuts, and Eva tears for the door to start lighting off the fireworks. Everyone in the bar proceeds to follow her, and we nearly get trampled by the people coming out of the bar (because we are cowering in the doorway as Eva lights off dangerous fireworks drunk, about 2 feet from people’s HEADS!) It was a sight to behold, but I guess this is how they do it over here? After the fireworks begin, Thomas comes walking out slowly and says to me in English “God Bless my car!”, as we proceed to watch debris from the fireworks fall on his $100,000 Mercedes! Quite funny…..but probably not to him the next day. Anyhow, it was another odd moment of the evening. A strange celebration. Over here, for better or worse, there seems to be a lack of procedure, order, or worrying about much of anything legitimate. Maybe it’s just because it’s a REALLy SMALL town? This sounds negative, but ‘primitive’ or ‘primal’ is a word that comes to mind when I think of how to describe it. Not that they are dumb, or less evolved, but they don’t seem to sweat the small details as much as we do in America. It’s can be refreshing at times, but weird at times.
So, after we shot off all of the fireworks for about 15 minutes (and the guy at the gas station was right, EVERYONE in the small town seemed to come out and light them off - the sky lit up at 12AM!), we ventured back into the pub.
After that, we exchanged ‘Happy New Year’s with some locals - Eva and Thomas included - and then we were asked if we wanted to play ‘Kicker’. Kicker, aka Fooseball in the US, seems to be very popular over here. They have a ‘Kicker’ field in EVERY bar you go in here - kind of like how they have a pool table in every bar in the US? The locals’ experience at playing the game for their entire lives was obvious! At one point Sam and I played a SINGLE guy by himself (it’s supposed to be 2 on 2), and we got ‘creamed’ by the guy! We played a bit more Kicker, and the wife managed to be dragged up to the makeshift ’stage’ by Eva for some Karaokee. After listening to a few renditions of “The Time of My Life” (originally sung by some awful duet back in the 80s), some Bon Jovi, and some AC/DC (the songs in English they had seemed to be predominantly ROCK - which I was happy with) that were sung by the wife, we chatted some more with some locals. We laughed a whole lot at Thomas as we would watch him sing. It would go something like this: “Insert German words here, insert German words here…” and then in English you would hear him scream at a break “Come ON! EVERYBODY!” It was quite hilarious….especially since he is normally not the happiest guy in the world. And, his wife kept throwing streamers at Thomas, and he was so oblivious that he would walk around with them stuck to his back side.
After about 2:30AM (we had tried to leave around 1:15, but Eva felt the need to keep pushing free drinks our way because of the candy we brought), we said goodbye and headed back home.
As we were getting ready for bed, we heard a commotion across the street. It was pitch black out, since all the lights in town go out around 1AM, but you could hear a mob of people screaming outside. We looked out the window, to see Eva (who was obviously ‘lit’…and notorious in town for fighting when she is drunk) tussling on the ground with another patron of the bar. It was quite the scene as they rolled on the ground and pulled each others hair - the flood lights had eventually come on in the parking lot of the Fuerwuehr. They were sensor operated, and all we could make out was Eva screaming “Insert German words, insert German words, REALLY BAD EXPLETIVES”. Eventually a car pulled up and threw one girl into a car and took off, Thomas came out and yelled at Eva to get back inside, and the crowd disperesed.
All in all it was quite an interesting evening! So, that’s what we did on New Year’s Eve. How about you!?
, and the sheep, horses and constant streams lakes and ponds in Holland would quickly remind me that we were no where near Illinois. It was a beautiful, sunny day, once we got out of the Rheinland-Pfalz area of Germany (which ALWAYS seems to be cloudy, gloomy, and rainy!). The sun came out once we hit Belgium, and we enjoyed very much the 3 hour trip. Although, the wife was a little ’skiddish’ with my desire to drive up to 100MPH along the way! 
I’ll say one thing about living and driving over here: you get REALLY ACCUSTOMED to driving REALLY FAST, very quickly!! I love it….and to have flat terrain to cruise, well, let’s just say I tend to have a ‘lead foot’. Hee….he.
