Happy New Year from William and me! This was a quiet new years eve for us. We stayed in, played video games, watched the 2019 Rockin’ New Years’ Eve Party with Ryan Seacrest, and enjoyed delicious food. There isn’t an answer to the Rockin’ New Years’ Eve Party in Germany, as far as we could determine, hence our enjoyment of an older, pre-COVID version.

While we watched people celebrate on TV without masks (gasp!), we enjoyed some homemade pizza, shrimp, and delicious German beer. My pizza was pesto-based with roasted cherry tomatoes, shallots, and garlic, with a bit of mozzarella sprinkled on top. William’s was tomato-based with heaps of mozzarella and thickly-sliced german sausage. Making pizza has become one of our favorite past-times, as it’s an easy dinner to whip together and always tastes delicious. Plus, it’s been an excellent way for us to use up odds and ends within our fridge (hence roasted shallots instead of onions and german sausage instead of pepperoni).

Our favorite part of the night though was definitely the fireworks. Generally speaking, in Germany, it is illegal to set off fireworks. However, they do make a blanket exception for December 31st and January 1st. On December 28th, you’ll see the stores fill up with fireworks that would make a South Carolinian blush before disappearing in the morning on December 31st till next year. The best part (in Christine’s opinion) is that Germany does not care, it seems, at all about fire safety. Do you live off of a tiny alley? You can bet that fireworks were set off in it. Are you five and want to play with fire? Totally cool. You probably won’t even have parental supervision. It makes me wish we had decided to hike up to the castle on the hill overlooking Landstuhl so we could see them going off from afar instead of trying to see them hanging off of our balcony. William’s favorite part was how on-time the chaos of all the fireworks going off was. There were small fireworks before midnight, but the big-boy fireworks were in the air less than five seconds into the new year.

Either way, it was an explosive way to start of 2023. We can’t wait to see what the new year brings us next!