Guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr 2010 !

Ah, this time last year, I remember running headlong through the streets with my German friend Alex, who was nice enough to take me New Year's party-hopping in Regensburg, making it by far the most active and celebratory New Year's in my personal experience. The streets were positively exploding with party-goers, beer bottles, party debris and, almost literally, fireworks. If I hadn't known it was New Year's, I would have been scared senseless to think I was in a real life war zone during a bombing.

We were in the cafe Picasso between the Cathedral and the Danube by this time, and just at midnight, the already enormously raucous streets positively burst, and I dashed outside just in time to see fireworks fill the sky over the river and the Stone Bridge just overhead. I'm very fearful of overwhelmingly loud noise, but I plugged my ears and watched for a while because it was still so spectacular nonetheless. I regret not having footage, sorry, guys.

Pathetic as it sounds, I actually can't think of any other New Year's in my life that wasn't much more than hugging my parents and exclaiming Happy New Year as a child, or later in life just being snuggled up in bed reading a book or writing in my journal and essentially completely forgetting all about it until it's already 0:15 and I suddenly look up and think, "Oh. Now I've got to remember to change the number on homework assignments." So that was a fairly outstanding memory from New Year's in Regensburg. [obvious]--> I'm not really a big party person. <-- [obvious]

Well, it's already long been New Year's in Germany and other countries that have a custom of doing this, but at any rate, here is Dinner For One, which is always watched every New Year's in Deutschland, for whatever reason I don't quite know. But it's amusing! Funnier still is that it experiences a far huger popularity in non-English-speaking countries, whereas it seems to be virtually unknown in English-speaking countries. And now those of you in said English-speaking countries will be one black-and-white comedy skit more enlightened. Enjoy!



"Same procedure as every year, James!"

Pumpkin Head

I live in an international dorm focused on language, where we are split into 7 language halls - Spanish, German, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. (I live on the German Hall). We have a Halloween party every year, and among the festivities, each hall is given a pumpkin to have at it and try to win our pumpkin carving competition. Preference is given to halls with pumpkins that are culturally related.

Some of you who know me might remember the German flag eagle that I contributed to the hall pumpkin two years ago:



It came out not too bad, but we unfortunately didn't even place.

This year was determinedly different. And though I initially started the pumpkin with no expectation of winning, it eventually came out to be first-place material.



Ta-Daaaaaa. I'm proud of it.

(And I hope my fellow hallmates won't hold it against me for taking all the work... It's difficult for more than 1-2 people to work on a pumpkin, though!)

Oh man, there might be a girl from the French hall who took photos of all the pumpkins lit up. I took some time to shave out the inside on the side with Beethoven's face so that it would shine through distinctly if there was a light inside. I will see if she has those.