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New Year's Eve

One thing that seems to be a true worldwide phenomenon is the realization that my last name is used on New Year's Eve signs around the globe. At first I felt slighted, as if someone were cheapening the worth of my last name. In more recent years I've taken is as a weird sort of compliment and even occasionally tried to make it into a pseudo-attention-getting thing if I'm feeling very "look at me" on a particular day.

But that's not what I'm supposed to tell you about because that's boring.

What's not boring is that most of the big cities around the world do big exciting fireworks displays and celebrations that stretch way beyond a ball dropping down a pole and standing in a crowd of 500,000 people for nine hours. In short, New Year's in the states generally blows. In the northern US you either go overpay by insane amounts to go to a bar and then wait for three hours for a cab back home or you go to a friend's house and it's...fine.

In Europe, you go anywhere, apparently. We did a day-tour in Bratislava, Slovakia and the tour guide was excitedly talking about how big the party is on New Year's Eve. I wouldn't have guessed that. Same in Budapest, Hungary. And when people in Italy heard we would be in Vienna for New Year's, they were all enthralled by this idea. It was lovely, they said, and it would be so much fun.

It took us a while to figure out what the actual celebration consisted of, but it was a big one. Somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people were expected, and there's a 12-stop "trail" through the city. Each station (most of which are walkable to each other but a few would necessitate a hop on a train) has a different entertainment-thing. Some have live pop-music, some have karaoke, some have waltz-lessons, some have waltz-performances, and others had lots of other things as well.

We were a little taken back by the number of people and thought about not going out at all, but we fought through our hermit-ness and ventured into the wild unknown.

Next thing you know, we're standing in front of a stage between the Burg Theater and the Rathaus, in the middle of about 400 couples, learning to waltz with all of them. The personalities onstage were doing the instructions in German first, then English, and it was the basic steps of the Viennese waltz. How quaint!

We wandered away for a bit after the lesson and basically just watched people set off fireworks in a big grassy area and listened to the music from various places, but the plan was to get back to the Rathaus (that's basically City Hall in German) for their midnight fireworks display.

Get this: instead of kissing at midnight, they waltz! So the ball dropped (metaphorically - there was no ball in Vienna, but there was a countdown in at least two languages simultaneously, which was weird and cool) and we kissed, but we were the only ones - everyone else started waltzing in the same step they'd been training us with earlier. Except the crowd had at least tripled and was well over 1000 couples.

As we danced, the fireworks started on both sides of the Rathaus, which was about as majestic and beautiful as it sounds. Except better. Here's a picture.

So what I'm trying to say is that Vienna for New Year's Eve is awesome. There was another place in the city doing fireworks too, and there are more fireworks from this display just off-frame to the right. It's incredible.

After the explosions finished, we waded through the crowd and watched a string quartet play songs like "You're the One That I Want" from Grease and "I'm So Excited" by the Pointer Sisters (although really made famous by Elizabeth Berkely in everyone's most memorable moment from Saved By the Bell), among others. 

Perhaps the most incredible part of it all was that our tram-ride home was crowded, but not so crowded that you hate everyone and the people were all pleasant and not off-putting or blackout drunk.

Vienna!

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