This year I spent New Years in Copenhagen for the first time, having been invited to a party by our friends Anja and Torben. I’d heard a lot about it, and it sounded like fun. Indeed it is fun, but unfortunately I was completely jet-lagged, having gotten back from New Mexico the previous day. I was so tired that I fell asleep on the couch of people I’d only just met, with five adults and three kids running around.
Apparently I thought that since Americans have a special relationship with fireworks, Europeans didn’t. It turns out that Europeans (or Danes and Germans at least) LOVE fireworks. Our fourth-of-July is their New Years Eve.
They love fireworks so much that some of them drive four hours to Germany, where they can purchase fireworks that are illegal in Denmark. They love fireworks so much that some fireworks are ignited at the dinner table. They like fireworks so much that extra fire fighters, paramedics, and clean-up crews have to be deployed.
Things get going at 6:00 pm, when the queen makes a speech. Apparently this is her only time to offer any hint at her political views (the royal family normally does not — refraining even from voting). Then, once her speech is over, you have some champagne. Then, at dinner, the fireworks start. They aren’t big fireworks, but they are fireworks. They’re called “table bombs”. You light the fuse and they explode, showering the room — and your dinner — with confetti and little cardboard pieces in the shapes of cocktail glasses and wine bottles.
At midnight, there is no dropping ball or Times Square. It’s just a timer and a shot of the clock on the Copenhagen city square. That would be anti-climactic, except that the non-stop sound of fireworks all over town, that has been going on all day, grows to a constant roar.
We went outside a few minutes after midnight, and it was like being in a war zone. I’ve seen lots of spectacular, professional firework shows, but this wasn’t like that. This is thousands upon thousands of regular people, going out into the streets and setting off batteries of rockets.
The news the next day reported 268 fires and 43 serious injuries. But, when you consider a country of six million people, virtually all of whom are lighting fireworks in a drunken state, that’s not bad. In fact, this year yielded the lowest number of eye-injuries in 30 years — only four.
We saw a few rockets fly astray and smack against apartment windows. New Years would a terrible night to leave your windows open. One hit the ledge on the top of a building and came right back down to the street (shown on the right). Wisely, the people we were with wore safety goggles.
The train ride home was interesting too. It was Copenhagen at the rowdiest I’ve ever seen it. And, as we rounded the corner near the apartment where the apartment is and there is was: the bonfire that I’ve heard about that gets illegally started every new year on the corner in front of Wilders, my favorite cafe, so I took this shot. (I was too tired to take a closer look.)
We went for a walk the next day and saw crews picking up spent fireworks and bonfire embers. Fireworks were still going off periodically all day, including the really loud homemade ones that are favorites of the rioters.
Recent Comments