Carnage

….and the streets were red with…

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were some blood mixed in with these spent fireworks casings. It’s our second New Years here and we were once again surprised with the gusto that this holiday is celebrated.

As soon as the sun set, bonfires lit up the streets. Every neighborhood had a favorite corner to gather on, where adults would eat and drink around the fire while their excited children ran rampant through the street touching a match to almost anything that would burn. Fireworks are only legal in Holland for the twenty-four hours on either side of midnight on December 31. The day before we had started seeing roving bands of teenage boys with plastic bags full of explosives. They roamed the neighborhoods setting these crackers off and giggling like girls with every loud burst. The tempo of explosions slowly built up after dark, and then in an eerie prelude to midnight, it almost stopped completely around 11:00 PM.

Just before 12:00 we were standing with a glass of champagne at a large open bay window on the third floor of our friends house looking out over Zannenpark and the double tower steeples of the local church, quietly toasting a new year. When the clock hit twelve the city exploded back into life with a brilliant display of colors and sounds rising above every street. Within 10 minutes, a thick, pinkish smoke hung over the rooftops and diffused the light from the aerial displays. We could no longer see the steeples of the nearby church. At 12:45, the pace of explosions finally started to subside. Holland spent 55,000,000 Euros on fireworks this year and the law says that they all had to be exploded by noon tomorrow. From what we had just witnessed, I think that they underestimated the total, neglecting to count all of the illegal fireworks that were brought in from Belgium.

At 1:15AM Beth and I wished our friends a happy new year and hopped on our bikes for the short ride home. The streets were still smoldering with fires and our bikes stirred up an acrid sulfur stench that hung low to the ground. Littered ruins of parties were scattered everywhere and we had to completely avoid several streets that were blocked or burning with piles of refuse. The explosions continued, now with singular distinctions that echoed through the otherwise quiet streets. It took very little imagination to picture a city tired from war, rather than one tired from celebration.

When we got home, Sage greeted us no more enthusiastically than normal. A loud radio left on had kept her oblivious to the carnage outside. The short walk up to the “pee park” seemed to be all the excitement that she needed.

Beste Wensen! Wishing you the best in 2006!