Frohes Neues Jahr!

First off, Happy New Year to everyone, even though this is a little late in the well wishing. It's still a new year and will be for another 359 days and hopefully, 2006 will be a better year than 2005.

Lannie and Chris arrived in Berlin on Silvester (December 31), but there wasn't much to do since it was a holiday. They came by my apartment later in the evening, as did Marisa, Liso, and of course Alex. Brad, a grad student in my program, also came because I had invited him. Anyway, we all managed to get one game of beer pong in and it was really great because I got Lannie to play. But whenever Liso or Alex got a ball into our cups, Lannie took a shot of tequila instead of drinking the beer because she doesn't like beer. Hardcore. I'll be getting those pictures from her that Chris took later and I must say, although we lost, it was pretty funny playing beer pong with Lannie.

I wasn't the only person who had people over; Pablo had 3 friends staying over for a few days and then for the party, there were countless others. They stayed in the living room while we were in my room (Americans vs. Germans, I guess?), but then at around 11:20 pm we all left the apartment to go to the Oberbaum Brücke for fireworks.

All I have to say is that it was frickin CRAZY. First off, people were setting fireworks off in the middle of the street because they're legal here. You could just buy them in the local supermarket and set them off anywhere. Walking over, I felt like I was going to get my head blown off by someone. Pablo had suggested that we go on the bank of the river rather than going on the actual bridge because the view would be better and he was completely right. There were fewer people, less smoke from fireworks, and way more room to scream "Happy New Year!" to each other. It was pretty incredible and I have to say, it was probably by far the best New Year's I've ever had. Sure, I've been in Times Square to ring in the new year with Dan, but that sort of sucked because we had to wait out in the cold for God knows how long without any sort of reassurance that we could go pee and find each other again. This was just awesome how you could just go out 40 minutes before the new year and get a great spot. Lannie and Chris went back to their hotel since their flight had arrived really early that day and wanted to get some rest, but everyone else stayed for a little while longer.

Much sekt (champagne not from Champagne, France) was drank on my part because I had bought two cheap bottles for everyone. Unfortunately nobody was drinking them, so I drank practically an entire bottle to myself and Brad drank the other. Alex, Liso, Marisa, and I returned to my apartment with Brad and two German guys (a friend of Pablo, Julian, and a friend of his, Mathias). We didn't do too much, though I did make a few drunken calls to wish Dan, Jenny, and Ken happy new years. Liso, Marisa, and Brad left soon afterward and Julian and Mathias convinced Alex and me to go clubbing over in Görlitzer Park, which is about 2 blocks away from me. I didn't want to go, but Alex convinced me to go and paid for my entry fee.
To make a long story short, I came back to my apartment at 7 in the morning really drunk, so that when I woke up, I was still slightly drunk and then had my first hangover ever. Weirdest part of the night was when a girl in the club was dancing behind me and pawing on my Fair Lawn PD sweatshirt that Chris had given to me for Christmas. She was looking at the tag for some reason, whether it was because she lost her own jacket and was looking for it or because she thought it was a cool-looking sweatshirt, I'm not entirely sure.

So all in all, it was a very good start to the New Year. The rest of the week I was busy showing Lannie and Chris around Berlin. I think I gave them a pretty good variety of stuff to see and they went on their Trabi Safari, which I thought was pretty funny and cheesy. I hope they had fun, even though poor Chris was sick most of the time. It was really great to see someone from home and the next person who will be coming from home is Jackie, though I won't see her for long, and then Ethel. Then the entire month will just be busy with her and then Alexandra (from Fair Lawn) coming, and then I'm off to Japan and then maybe my parents will come. (Wow, that was a horrible sentence I just wrote, but I'm sick with a cold and it's killing me.) I figured it out: During the month of March, I will have 6 days completely to myself. Time seriously flies.

Currently listening to OK Go's album Oh No with "A Million Ways" playing.