New Year in Germany
At no time do I ever feel more “abroad” in Germany than at New Year.
Germany has the strangest New Year traditions of any country I have been to. For a start, there is Dinner For One. This is a short comedy sketch in English which for reasons unknown became a cult hit in Germany.
This sketch is shown by all the major broadcasters at some point on New Year’s Eve – some of them show it several times. If you really want to get into the swing of it, you could try to drink along with it. My tip is to drink along with Miss Sophie. Tracking James glass for glass is for hardened practitioners with concrete livers.
Then there’s the lead fortune telling. One New Year’s Eve it is traditional in Germany to foretell your fortune for the coming year by pouring molten lead into a bowl of water and from the ensuing shape working out what will happen to you. They sell little kits with lumps of lead and a spoon in which to melt it over a candle.
Given the shape my piece of lead always seems to end up in, I’m predicting a pretty nasty accident with a combine harvester for myself.
And then, of course there are the fireworks at midnight. Fireworks are only allowed to be sold for a couple of days a year in Germany – basically the days running up to New Year. Of course everyone races to the shops and stocks up on rockets, bangers, Catherine wheels and roman candles. By the time midnight arrives (and this year is likely to be a case in point with the icy weather), everyone is tipsy from watching Dinner For One, depressed from the fortune telling (at least my fortune always appears to be a gruesome death of some sort) and in no mood to stand outside for more than about five minutes watching the admittedly spectacular firework extravaganza. But get this… in Germany you are obliged to let off all your fireworks. It is illegal to store them in your house – or even the garden shed – after January 2nd. (Yes, that would be health and safety).
So if you went mad at the supermarket and bought fifteen packs of rockets, you can confidently expect to be staying up until three in the morning, lighting rockets. Long after all your family have trudged off to bed. We once fell foul of this on a New Year’s Eve where there was a raging thunderstorm. Not only was it virtually impossible to light the damn fireworks because the flame kept blowing out, but also in the high wind, the launch bottles kept blowing over, leading to fireworks shooting all over at ground level. It was certainly entertaining; especially as that year my blob of lead could easily have resembled seriously botched plastic surgery for burns.
This year we shall be cautious with the shopping list… if it’s likely to be minus 20 or so outside, I reckon four or five rockets will be about as much as any of us can take. I predict my lump of lead might look like frostbitten limb-stumps.
You can find Cathy on twitter – @planetgermany
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10 Responses to New Year in Germany
Revenge: A dish best served cold?
I’m not a nasty person. I’ve never in my life deliberately set out to hurt someone, or cause them pain. But right now, and for the past three or four years, on and off, my thoughts have been filled with fantasies of revenge. Now I have the opportunity, and I can’t decide what to do. [...]
Well…it takes all sorts! Enjoy the fireworks…
Twitter: SuzeStMWrites
We have watched this sketch many many times – with our Swedish and German friends. And LOVE IT. The obligatory drinking with Miss Sophie never fails to amuse us.
And fireworks, yes our village will be doing fireworks too. There’s no stopping some people.
Have a good one, Cathy!
I love this “Dinner for One”, but of course, I am the only one laughing in the family.
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That’s the Swiss version of “Dinner for One” (note the table cloth is missing).
Hang on, didn’t I comment on that last year?
Lol… are you sure you haven’t been in Germany for too long, Graham?
Does it show?
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Ah, Dinner for one – the memories …..
, although most of the time I watch the reaction of the students (I have seen it so many times I almost know it by heart anyway). I think Dinner for One is a bit like Marmite, you either love it or you hate it.
I love showing it to my adult German students in the last lesson before Christmas,therefore ensuring, I get to see it too
Half of of my students laugh and thoroughly enjoy the film, the other half can’t wait for it to finish, as they find it extremely stupid.
Me, I love it and I must see ‘the same procedure as every year’!
Twitter: german_tutor
Ahh, good old Teutonic efficiency! Where would we be without it? (can we say this without causing offence? It’s so hard to tell, these days). I love the idea that you are legally obliged to use up all your fireworks by Jan 2nd.