New Year's Eve (Day)

The next day, New Year’s Eve day I actually went to church, though it was a Baptist church (I guess that still counts as church). Sarah was asked to help that church’s choir that day because they were having a very special service; a 50 year-old woman was getting baptized. The service was very nice and very long and the choir was ok, your typical church choir, not great but not good either. I had several members of the choir that knew I was American come up to me and they would try out their English on me. The piano player talked to me for a little while after the choir’s warm up because she actually worked in the states for a little over a year and for half of that time she worked about half an hour away from Doylestown (my hometown) so she was familiar with the area and was egger to talk to me.

I later joined Sarah to her old music teacher’s house where she practiced her part of a duet by Bach that she will be doing with the teacher’s daughter in the coming weeks at a festival. I sat at the table with the teacher’s wife who was sewing something and was very obliging and made every attempt to talk to me without distracting the practice between her husband and Sarah. I made note of the decorations on their Christmas trees and she told me that she make all of them herself. The ornaments are these shinny gold and metallic red paper stars that looking like they are folded in a origami fashion as well as these straw stars that have thread tied around them at the creators desire to look like snowflakes. I see these ornaments on every Christmas tree in Germany and can’t help but enjoy looking at each ornament. After the lesson we were treated to coffee, tea, chocolate, and pretzels. Our conversation was lively and consisted mainly of the German school systems and music. Both the teacher and his wife knew Basic English and continued to ask me questions. I was able to communicate with them quite easy and when we were talking about music I hummed a few pieces that I sang in high school choir because I forgot the name of some of them. The teacher knew all the pieces I was talking about and was so excited and got up to go play all these classical pieces from memory. In a cast of characters the teacher would certainly be cast as the crazy absent minded professor. The teacher ended up pulling out and sharing a piece of music that he wrote the lyrics to the other year and completed the music a few months ago. He had it professionally printed and the song is about what else would they sing about in Germany other then BEER. He handed a copy to both Sarah and me on our way out. He wished me well on my trip to Rome and then ran out of the house a minute later after Sarah and I were in the car to warn me about being safe and taking care of myself while in Rome and then he wished us both again a Happy New Year.

The drive to the next town where Sarah lives was quite pleasant. We passed about five farms in about three minutes and then we were in Sarah’s town. Sarah quickly ran back to her house to get dressed for the evening concert that we drove down into Hamburg for. The concert took place in one of the other four main churches in Hamburg, St. Michael’s.

It is apparently tradition for this church to have a New Year’s evening mass where Bach is played throughout the service, and it is all free. Sarah was worried that the hour long warm up was too much down time for me, but it was just about the right amount of time for me to take an unnecessary amount of pictures of the church. It was beautiful and had all these great plaster details. I am not really sure as to when the church was built but listening to the Bach that was being played by the orchestra and sung by the choir it almost took me back in time. There were even soloists purchased to perform that evening so the concert was amazing and served as a great way to spend the first half of my New Year’s Eve. At the end of the church service the choir had a surprise for their choir director who just received a promotion of holding a higher position of directing other choirs in Hamburg. The announcement was made to the entire church and then under the direction of another director they sang the Hallelujah chorus for him. The concert was followed by a reception for the choir members in the basement of the church, so I wandered around for about twenty minutes with champagne in hand.

Right after the reception ended we left for a New Years Eve party that was being held at one of the choir member’s apartment. I was introduced to this means of cooking called Raclette. It is huge over here, everyone has a raclette grill. I guess it is kind of like fondue. You have a plethora of foods, like peppers, broccoli, collie flower, corn, pineapple, mushrooms, a variety of cheeses, deli meats, pork, fish and chicken, and several spices, and you prepare the meats on top of the grill and then you warm-up or melt things underneath the grill in these little trays. It is really fun because you can make anything you want and it is a fun and social. There were six of us gathered around the raclette grill over two tables in this signal bedroom apartment. It was a very tight fit but we all became very close. Sarah and I were the youngest people there by quite a few years, but that seems to be the thing over here. You have several friends that span throughout the years. They made me try this German drink, it is a non alcoholic beer mixed with lemonade, it was ok, but very carbonated and I had a very hard time trying not to be rude and burp. The conversation was of coarse in German but the hostess spoke English because she studied for a short time in England, so she was very attentive and made sure that if Sarah didn’t fill me in on the conversation that she would update me with the topic of the moment. I didn’t have a hard time understanding the conversations in German; I was able to pull out a few things and was asked numerous times my opinion on certain topics, especially on politics. That I tried very hard to avoid because everyone here hates Bush and American CEO’s that are taken charge of German companies. Everyone there understood English so I was able to communicate with all of the guests very well though I did reserve my opinions when it came to politics.

When it was nearing midnight we quickly cleaned up the room and actually the only guy that was there was the one that washed all the dishes. I made a comment about that and all the women laughed and me and said that is normal for men to wash dishes is Germany. I laughed and said that perhaps I need to find myself a nice German boy; they all got a kick out of that. We quickly ran back into the other room and sat around the table to pore our champagne take note that we sat down about 45 seconds before it turned midnight. We watched the clock tentatively, and yes, there was not a TV or radio to help us count done the last seconds of year. Outside we could hear all the fireworks going off. Here in Germany fireworks are used the most on New Years, and they are more decked out then the fireworks you find in the states for the fourth of July. Sarah and one of the other ladies stayed inside because Sarah is afraid of fireworks but the host and I were able to encourage the other people to join us outside for the fireworks outside. After the show outside and lighting some of the fireworks of our own we returned inside to eat a traditional German pastry, well jelly filled donut (which I do like very much), but never the less I tried it. The rest of evening we just talked and listened to the host play her piano forte after much encouragement from me. Sarah and I ended up getting back to her home a little before four o’clock.