Who’s this ‘Silvester’ dude?

New Year’s Eve in Berlin has come and gone, but the singed eyebrows remain. Earlier this week I was making room on my camera when I came across photos from the end-of-the-year festivities, known in Germany as Silvester.

Pesky anarchist post-Molotov tossing? Not quite. It's Barrett making his way to the train platform at the U-Bahn station.

Viewed out of context, one might think I’d stumbled across photos from the Seattle’s WTO protest or perhaps of the recent riots in Greece. Nope. It’s Silvester, and it’s dangerously fun, primarily because people – drunk and sober – throw lit fireworks like butterscotch candies at a Fourth of July parade.

Under attack on Unter Den Linden.

On New Year’s Eve, Barrett and I left our Moabit apartment around 10:30 p.m. and headed toward the Brandenburg Gate, which hosts a countdown, a la Times Square.

Upon leaving the safe confines of our building, we realized that our sleepy neighborhood had undergone a Jekyll & Hyde transformation. All those pop-pop-bang-bang-whistle-crashes we had heard from our apartment were now dangerously close, and by close, I mean originating at our feet.

From their apartment windows, people pelted the road below with lit fireworks. On the street, families and friends gathered together to set off rockets, as mini-explosions rained on them from above. Kids laid in wait behind bushes and between cars, tossing M-80s at passersby and under buses and cars. Others slam-dunked the small red cardboard tubes in metal trash bins for a little extra boom boom.

We found the real action at the Brandenburg Gate. After the professional firework display ended, it became amateur hour, with Unter Den Linden, the avenue leading up to the gate, turning into one giant, drunk launch pad. Booze bottles and the gritty remnants of thousands of exploded rockets littered the ground. Crackling streaks of red, blue, green and white popped in the haze-filled air.

It was magic — especially for a California girl like me, whose one-on-one experience with fireworks was largely limited to sparklers (“Look! I can write my name in the air … again”) and the world’s biggest incendiary let-down, the snake.