Berlin, New Year’s Edition:
where to begin. where to end.
Berlin at New Year’s is an experience unique to this mess of a city and unrivaled in its excess. It is a twenty-four hour celebration spanning an entire city, carrying off everyone in its wake.
It’s a cacaphonic maelstrom of fireworks, alcohol, drugs, music, and ebullience, one you are unable to escape from - and don’t want to. Starting in the afternoon, the sound of fireworks going off becomes a constant, a background noise, one that lessens only in the early hours of the morning. Come nightfall, fireworks are set off at any street corner, any roof, any park, any available space - and the bright lights and flashes are accompanied by the constant of sirens in the distance.
As with any good night, my New Year’s Eve in Berlin has dissolved into shards of memories, that, if I follow them, will give me an incomplete topography of events.
Most visibly I remember breaking about any and all train etiquette rules on the subway; someone shooting up heroin next to me, dancing to Sinead O’Connor with a bunch of Irish guys, dressed as stereotypical Irish guys*; singing IRA fight songs, with said Irish guys; setting off fireworks in the street; I and D running through a field as fireworks where going off all around them; drinking mystery Irish punch that temporarily hampered my ability to read; being filmed on the subway by tourists; having a picnic at a gas station at 1am; counting down the minutes to midnight in a big huddle of Irish, English, and American people, surrounded by what felt like half of Berlin on top of a hill in a park somewhere while it seemed like the city was exploding around us; running through the streets, beer bottle in every hand, celebrating the new year by shouting very loudly; being thrown out of a swing dancing club because we were neither over the age of 65, nor belonged to the dance academy; smashing a multitude bottles and other common street vandalism; being denied entry to a women’s only strip club at an airport because we had guys with us; having a very nice conversation with a scantily clad male stripper in about -2° weather; riding the subway for hours until we fell asleep; spending half of the remaining night passed out at McDonalds, being woken by a security guard every 30minutes and the other half on the cold train station floor; getting kebab at 3 in the morning with at least 20 other people; befriending pretty much every person in the same subway car as us; helping A up at least five times cause she kept falling.
It’s been an honor Berlin. Let’s not do this again.
(*they dressed up as ‘Irish’ for New Year’s)
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