War zone? No, it’s just New Year’s Eve in Deutschland

New Year’s Eve in Germany is legendary. All throughout the fall, my friends at school would tell tall tales about New Years celebrations from the past, about the crates of fireworks they shot off, how the main town square was covered in a fog of smoke like a war zone, how somebody lost the top layer of skin on their legs from a premature firework explosion, how somebody knew somebody who was going to Poland and bringing back the really big fireworks this year.

Friends, those were not tall tales.

As the son of a fireworks obsessed Field Artilleryman and also as someone who lives about two miles from the border with New Mexico where the fireworks mega warehouses are open year round, I thought I knew a thing or two about fireworks. I was wrong.

After hyping me up for months about Silvester, which is the German name for New Year’s Eve, my friends made sure it was a big night. Most of our friends live in the city where we go to school, Bocholt, but my host family lives outside a tiny village that is about 20 minutes away by bus, or a freezing cold 30 minute bike ride. So for New years my host brother Linus, host cousin Leona and I were invited to spend the night at our friend Samira's house in Bocholt. There were about ten of us who went over, some of them live in the city and a few others like us live farther away.

In Germany, they don’t sell fireworks year round, only for about a week leading up to Silvester. Only once a year, so they have to go big. My host brother and I had stocked up on fireworks from Müller the week before and we thought we had a lot…but when our host showed us an ENTIRE CLOSET full of fireworks, we knew things were about to get crazy. 

We got to Samira’s house a few hours before midnight and just hung out playing games and eating crackers and gummy bears. Around 11, we finally left the house with fireworks clutched in our arms and stuffed in every pocket. We set off to join pretty much the entire rest of the city to shoot them off. Luckily, our friend’s house is downtown so we only had to walk about 5 minutes before we got to the main square in Bocholt, the heart of the action. We set up camp near one of the 4 entrances to a square because almost every other prime spot was already taken up. We didn't want to spend too much time searching for the ideal spot since we were itching to start shooting things off. We ended up right next to a shoe store, and the day after I could have sworn I saw a few scorch marks on the windows when I walked by. There were probably a thousand people there all shooting off their own fireworks. For the hour and a half that we were there I don’t think the explosions let up for a second. 

Just like in war movies, there was a layer of smoke floating about chest level that made everything hard to see and the entire city center smelled like burnt gunpowder. There were people from every age there but the craziest were probably from age 15-25. Everyone was shooting off bottle rockets and throwing firecrackers but every few minutes someone would set off a multi shot mortar or one of those firework boxes that shoot like 200 fireworks into the air in like the span of 15 seconds. Some people also had roman candles that they were shooting into the air but then also occasionally dip and shoot into the crowd. I was surprised by the non existent presence of the Polizei or even buckets of water. Maybe I just didn't see them because the crowd was so thick. Different groups of friends were camped out throughout the main square, just going nuts lighting off their arsenals. If you didn't know better, you would think a riot was going on. At midnight, the fireworks reached their climax and absolutely everyone just started going crazy throwing firecrackers and shooting off giant fireworks not only into the air but also at other people. We even got a few fireworks shot at us that exploded at our feet. I can’t verify this, but my friends said they spotted some of the illegal firecrackers from Poland, which looked like mini sticks of dynamite and could almost be classified as bombs since that's about how loud they sounded. The whole scene was hilarious and unforgettable. Thankfully, I did not lose an eye.

About 30 minutes after the New Year, the wild crowd in the town square finally started breaking up. We made our way through the smoke filled streets back to the house with our firework stock depleted and basically just stayed up laughing and telling funny stories all night. At about 5 am, some of our friends started peeling off to fall asleep, but some of us stayed up talking late into the morning. It was already starting to get light outside by the time I went to sleep around 7 am. We were all just sprawled out on mattresses and couches in the living room and I got maybe 3 hours of sleep before the sun woke me up. Before we went home, we all had a normal German breakfast of bread and preserved meats and cheese together. We all ate in near silence, though, because everyone was still half asleep. It was definitely a night to remember and I highly recommend that everyone go out and experience a true German Silvester.