Having spent over a week in Israel where we were happy not to hear any explosions or gunshots, we returned on New Year's Eve to Denmark. We had been warned that Danes take New Year's very seriously, first listening to the Queen's annual address, and then enjoying a mix of drinking and personal fireworks shows (hmm... is that a good combination???) Our other clue had been the circular we received listing all the fireworks we could buy. You can see the website to get a sense, but the packages run from around $20 to $200 containing hundreds of fireworks, from small personal items to rockets that would look typical of a small-town fireworks display on the Fourth of July in the US.
Anyway, our plane from Israel landed around 9:30 pm local time, and I was pleased not to see any fireworks from the plane window. We went through customs and baggage claim to catch our train home. We had to take one train to Copenhagen's central station and then another from there to Roskilde. Our first real sign of the events was around 10:30 pm in the central train station. We saw loud groups of revelers in the station. We had to wait about 30 minutes for the next train, and went out into the streets where we could see fireworks in the city near the station. The sight lines were not so great, and the weather was cold for us having just returned from terrific (read: warm and mostly sunny) weather in Israel, so we went back into the station to wait. On our train ride we could see some fireworks out the window here and there, which seemed typical of the view you might have expected in a remote site in the US on a train where there might be a few different city displays around the 4th of July. We caught the bus back to our home around 15 minutes before the New Year, and could hear fireworks close to our house, but just a bit here and there. Normally we celebrate New Year's with a party theme "It's midnight somewhere" and mark the occasion at a local time that is anywhere from 4 to 8 pm, but here we were up at the right local time for the main event. We opened up the curtains (but not the windows) and found that we could see some fireworks in almost any direction we looked being launched right here in our neighborhood. As we approached midnight, the intensity was as impressive as any fireworks I have seen, both in variety, color, and complexity, and particularly in quantity. We are all familiar with keeping up with the Jones' as a phenomenon, for subtle things like new cars, fancy house ornamentation, or landscaping, but this is much more direct, akin to winter holiday lighting displays in some neighborhoods. The fireworks came in many forms from many directions. I was happy to be inside and to know that the house and the ground all around was covered in a snow and ice. In this respect, lighting fireworks in winter makes much more sense than in midst of hot dry summer... The displays were tapering off, but still going when we turned in close to 1 am. In the morning Judy had a chance capture the typical remains mounted in the snow banks between our sidewalks and bicycle lanes.
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| our neighbor's driveway, which looks like many others in the neighborhood |
As I finish our description of this event, I wanted to see what the Queen's message was to the people of Denmark as we were en route when she spoke. I found this nice article giving a less personal but effective account of the New Year's Eve celebration. It conveys the scene well, although I will note that we did not witness any topless revelers... remember we were cold outside in our coats. According to the article, the queen
warned of "a crisis of values" with the advancement of technology and accelerated pace of modern life, and urged listeners to show more solidarity and mutual trust in the new year.
I'm not sure how much the queen's message influences politics or policy, but I hope that plastic solar cell technology is not viewed as contributing to a "crisis of values" here in Denmark! Another English news source, the Copenhagen Post has this coverage of the Queen's speech, with substantive quotations translated into English.
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