New Year

Okay, I stole this picture online but I WAS in that crowd somewhere. I'm the one wearing the gray jacket.

I am pretty sure that my New Year's resolution should be to blog about events earlier but we all know that would crumble in a couple of days. So here we are. New Year or Sylvester as they call it in Germany was pretty great. My host parents were already gone. They decided to go to the Ostsee for New Year. My host mom bought me an American style pizza before she left and made a point of telling me that it really was all for me. Ahhhh joy. So I had the pizza for breakfast yes I did. It was great. I decided to go to Berlin for New Year. I had been warned by my host family and past participants about Berlin on New Year's and you will read why in a bit. Anyway, me and some other participants wanted to go to the Brandenburg Gate for New Year. The Brandenburg gate concert (which is free by the way) is the largest open-air party in the world...THE WORLD! Over 1.5 million people gathered at the Brandenburg Gate to bring in 2012. It was crazy!!!!! First me and my friends were in front of the gate where there was a concert going on. There were some pretty big German music names performing there. Udo Jörgens and Cassandra Steen are two of the most notable. If you don't know who they are, you best educate yourselves. Udo Jörgens was first introduced into my life by a high school German teacher of mine with the song "Aber Bitte Mit Sahne" which means "But Please With Cream". The song is pretty comical as the entire song is about this guy basically loving some ice cream sundae. It is so weird and amazing at the same time. He is basically the Barry Manilow of Germany. It is also worth noting that my host mom has a very healthy obsession with this guy but she admits that he is way too old for her. He's like 77 now. One time for breakfast, she played all his hits including "Aber Bitte Mit Sahne". It was the most fun I have had at breakfast in Germany. Please, if you care about me even a little bit, check out the video below. I think it is funny even when you can't understand the words because, as I told you, this guy is singing about a freakin' sundae!

On to the next star. Cassandra Steen is the beautiful singer born from a German mother and an African-American father. She rose to fame in the trio Glashaus and is now flying solo. You should take interest in her because, guess what? She is a German and American citizen! I first stumbled onto the image of her when we arrived at the Brandenburg Gate and saw all these Weight Watchers ads around with her in them. It looked just like she was saying "Shoot girl, join Weight Watchers because I said so." I had to take a picture with them.

When she performed she sang her latest hit "Stadt" which means "City". In the song she talks about building a city for someone...sounds like a lot of work if you ask me. Check out the video below. It's a catchy song and you might like it.

Okay, enough about these German pop stars. Me and my friends were in front of the gate. It was super crowded. Literally packed and drunk people with open cups were trying to squeeze by all the time. Thank goodness nothing spilled on me or we might have had some problems for real. Around 11 pm me and my friends decided to go to the other side of the gate where there was no concert but where you could still see the fireworks at midnight. we moved because we did not want to be in that mob when midnight hit and the stampede to the subways began. On the way we saw a number of interesting things. First off, we saw people setting fireworks off in the Holocaust memorial. Ummmmmmmmmm not sure why people thought that was okay. I would have shown just a little more respect but those people were probably drunk...or very confused. We also saw a ton of drunk people in the streets setting fireworks off. They would either throw them or launch them out of their hands (ouch). You had to be on the lookout to make sure you weren't gonna get hit by anything. I am not saying it was a war zone or anything but it was potentially dangerous and staying aware was the key. So we arrived at the other side of the gate and were greeted by an equally large crowd. There were so many people speaking English. I have lived in Germany for a sizable amount of time so I actually found myself thinking "What are those foreigners doing here?" Haha, as if I am not a foreigner myself? We stood and talked for awhile and when midnight arrived we got to see the fireworks go off at the Brandenburg Gate. I was at the largest open air party in the WORLD. At midnight I felt like I was at the center of the universe. It was amazing and pretty surreal.

Just in case you forgot what this post was about...read the sign.

Brandenburg Tor in the distance.

The streets were filled, I mean filled, with litter including that perfectly functional purple boa. Now why would someone throw that away? 

Picture op on the packed U-Bahn!

Since I live only 90 minutes from Berlin, I decided to catch a red eye train back to Magdeburg. I was glad I did since I got to sleep in my own bed that morning but I was apparently not the only Berlin visitor with that idea. The trains were packed and for an hour of the trip I had to sit on some steps in the train...although I considered myself lucky to have gotten those steps. I arrived at my home in Magdeburg at about 5 in the morning. I closed all the blinds in the house, showered, and went to bed. I was gonna post the video I took of the moment the year changed but You Tube said it would take 305 minutes to upload and I really don't have time for that. I hope your New Year was great as well.

Stole this one too.