Shenanigans Crossing Borders

An early morning walk, the last of 2025, led JP through a field, past windmills, into a vineyard, along the town’s hospital’s helipad, past a frozen fountain, and up to a wild rooster. These walks really do cover a lot of random things

Being New Year’s Eve, everything is open until about 1400, and though stuffs will be closed Thursday on the first, everything will be back open on Friday, so no 4 day weekends this week!

After breakfast, we took a family stroll, exploring more of our city. This time we discovered what people call Dracula’s grave (spooky?), the leaning tower of Kitzingen, a marker of distances to the next towns, the barrel jester, a red phone booth free library, and made our way across the river.

Fun fact, the official name of this city is Kitzingen au Main, which translates to “Kitzingen on the river”. The river (is called the Main River) is pretty wide, and it runs all the way to Frankfurt, and keeps going to a bunch of other cities. JP has a dream of getting a boat and just moving up and down the river, exploring the country by boat.

JP had the fancy idea that we should walk over to the airport (other fun fact, it’s a former military airport, and doesn’t seem to be used for anything commercial). On the way, we found the largest grocery in town (Edeka), and we took an indoor tour to get a sense of how this compares to the stores by us. It is massive, the bacherei (bakery) is stocked, there are lots of choices, and many sections just for cheese.

The fireworks themselves are something to actually talk about. Like the playgrounds and many other facets of European life, fireworks on this evening are an exercise in self-preservation while open-jawed astonishment in the bevvy of flammable, explosive materials people wish to detonate in close proximity to each other. 

And all this on top of a bridge!

Simply put – New Year’s Eve is like living inside of a fireworks display. Leaning over the sides of the bridge, or holding up rockets in their hands, or using empty bottles in the middle of the road, everyone was lighting off fireworks. Some were tossing explosives into the middle of the street, others threw them into the river. Roman candles, sparklers, whizbangs, twirlers, fountains, poppers, zipping magnolias, flying dragons, and myriad other whimsically named fireworks were on full display.

And yes, they might even fly at you.

Caveat emptor!

Sometimes a rocket flew into the crowd. Someone tossed a popper at the feet of others. Another burning top spinner lit up right near a group sitting for a smoke. Dads and moms, sons and daughters, boyfriends and girlfriends, gaggles of teens and tweens, Russians and Germans, North Africans and Ukranians, everyone was anticipating and participating in the biggest winter event here!

And wow, there were a lot of people!

And at midnight, every church bell, every tower, every horn, every firework, everything contributed to the cacophony that meant the new year had arrived. This was the demarcation of time between the old year and the new. 

Auld Lang Syne

JP & A1 stayed on the bridge and watched while the others moved away and more toward the main strip. When the bells tolled, bats flew from the belfry, and the people of the city mingled and cheered.

What a rush.

Now it’s late and we’re exhausted. Happy New Year. ‘Cause, baby, you’re a firework, 

come on, show ’em what you’re worth, make ’em go, “Oh, oh, oh”, as you shoot across the sky