Christmas Trees

It seems to be some sort of tradition in Berlin that once Christmas is over, instead of putting your Christmas tree in the bin, recycling it, or using it as firewood, you throw it out of the window. As I was walking the other day I saw someone on the third floor balcony carefully manoeuvring their tree right onto the edge, and then giving it a final push until it fell and crash landed on the floor below. Luckily noone was walking or driving past at the time. The pavements are all currently littered with sad, abandoned Christmas trees, lying where they have been heartlessly pushed off the balcony, or swept up into great tree graveyards on street corners. As if January wasn’t cold, grey and miserable enough!

Happy New Year!

Berlin goes mental for fireworks! I thought it would be a good place to celebrate the New Year, but I had no idea it would be quite so insane. The idea behind the fireworks is to make so much noise that it scares away any bad things from following you into the New Year. Even in the afternoon, in broad daylight, there were kids letting off fireworks in the street, and there were just more and more as we headed towards midnight. We were at a flat party, and just before New Year everyone trooped out onto the balcony. There were fireworks all around us, from the big organised display at the Brandenburg Gate somewhere in the distance, through to fireworks being let off in the street right below the balcony. There were even fireworks flying out from balconies around us. The German attitude to New Year definitely seems to be something along the lines of ‘Why let a little matter like health and safety ruin your celebrations?!’ Luckily we all made it through the night in one piece, and hopefully the fireworks did their job of scaring away anything nasty – Happy New Year everyone!