Monday, December 31, 2012

three hundred and sixty-six

it is 8:48 and the fireworks have been going off non-stop since before six.  well, they may have stopped temporarily for the queen's speech right at six, but then they resumed with a renewed fervor after her majesty's speech wishing every dane, near and far, a happy new year... telling them to take care of each other, and to encourage the youth to believe in themselves (and not live in cyberspace).  at least that is what i gather from the one 'rough translation' i could find on royalcorrespondent.com. (we tried watching online, but it kept stopping on us.) these two things, setting off fireworks and listening to the queen's traditional new year's speech, and a third, kransekage, a special marzipan cake, are how the danes (if you can generalize, and you can, to a much greater extent than in the u.s.) celebrate new year's eve.  and also, i believe, jumping off a chair at midnight.

but the fireworks... i have never known so many fireworks.  certainly denmark puts america's fourth of july celebrations to shame.  to shame!  and this is a very small country.  as greg noted (before six o'clock and then does not compare to now), they were going off at a rate of more than one every second, easily within our earshot, in our very peaceful part of the town.  we've had views from our house from three different directions, and i suspect we'd be able to see from a fourth, if not a fifth, if only we had more windows.  this incredible demonstration has been building up for days, if not weeks.  i can't remember the first day i began hearing fireworks here.  when we were in copenhagen there was a guy lighting off cherry bombs under his shoes.  greg and his mom saw a man carrying a rather impressive amount of fireworks from the super best this afternoon, where apparently they are sold (though i never noticed them there yesterday).  and twice within the last twenty minutes a reading of mary poppins has had to be paused to watch them from the sofa.

and... you didn't know this, but there was a long pause in writing this to have some more pie.  greg's mom made a second apple pie today to satisfy our completely over-indulgent whims...


and now, as i resume writing this at 10:17, the fireworks have not slowed down.  and we will drink a bit of glogg and play another game of scrabble now, so here are our random photos from tonight, where i am oddly in front of the camera for the first two shots... 

blue and green...



blues...


stripes...


green with blonde...


and a happy last day of 2012!  see you in 2013!  thanks for reading!

2 comments:

nina said...

Happy New Year and thanks for writing!

It strikes me that the Danes are trying to make light on a dark winter day (with all the fireworks).

I like the Queen's message (about taking care of each other).

Anonymous said...

The Queen's New Year address can be found here in english,on her official website.If nothing else the website has some nice photos of all their palaces...
http://kongehuset.dk/english/Menu/news/her-majesty-the-queens-new-year-address-2012


/Erik