New Year celebration in Munich

We celebrated New Year in Munich. We invited some friends of ours (note the Donnie Brasco quote) over to our place for dinner, some conversation and lots of fireworks. The latter, we did not actually have, since I am an against-wasting-money-when-there-is-so-much-poverty kinda guy. Some people rather call me a cheapskate. What we did offer however, was a splendid display of fireworks by the affluent (a.k.a. non-cheapskates) from our apartment in the eighth floor.

We had a great time with our guests that evening. There were seven of us and an ample amount of food. We didn't prepare all the food though - it was a potluck (cheapskate ring a bell?). At the end of the day, there was still much food left. Like most hosts, we kept the most of it (don't say anything!).

People started test firing their ammunition (a.k.a. fireworks) at about 10 pm and stopped again at about 11 pm. The first photo shows one of the early test shots. The silence in between was needed to prepare for the big one at midnight. Armed with my camera, I waited, took some shots, waited some more and then took some more shots. I was trying the whole time to get some "killer shots". (Since it sounded like a war zone that night, I thought I'd use some war movie lingo too)

The second photo shows Munich city center right about midnight. It was taken towards the north of our apartment. As you can see, Munich's skyline was pretty well lit up by the fire works.

The third photo was taken towards the South. As it clearly shows, the Southerners can party too.

The fireworks went on for about an hour and progressively receded.  You could almost hear the battalions running out of ammunition. Of course, there were still some persistent resistance fighters on the loose way past the 1-hour time frame. I caught one of the night's final shots in the last photo.

A couple of our guests had to leave before midnight but the rest stayed on past midnight to watch the fireworks, or at least a part of it. We had a wonderful time together that day and it was a great start to the New Year.


joel@jjsolomon.com

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