Silvester

So I started seeing signs up for Silvester parties as soon as I got home. I didn't know what Silvester was. I thought it might be linked to New Years as all the parties were on the 31st. Turns out Silvester is the German equivalent of New Years. But why call it Silvester? Carlos found this equally confusing and asked his hair dresser about it. "Silvester?" He asked, while the hair dressed took away ribbons of black and white shiny curls from his head. "Yeah, you know, like the cat," is what his hair dresser replied, hoping this would somehow explain things.

Our new years was kinda shitty. The good part was before we left the house. Brian and his friend Eduardo, who looks like Mr. July in a gay men of South America 2009 calendar, came over and had some champagne with us. Carlos's cousin Aude and her friend Marine are in from Paris so we had a nice little mini party watching drunk people shoot off M80s in the street. Then it came time to go out and Brian and Eduardo left to go to a gay club that has a labyrinth below it, you know, for sexual exploration. Aude and Marine and Carlos and I started to walk to the Ubahn, despite the fact that Brian had warned us about people setting off fireworks in the ubahn trains. Getting to the train station (which is all of a block away) was frightening enough. As we ducked and weaved among the random bursts of soot, ash, and cinder, the 20 degree frozen air shook with booms and bangs. But the worst was yet to come. In the subway it turned out people were setting off fireworks at the feet of the crowds gathered to take the night train out to Alexanderplatz. It is a miracle no one was injured. Everyone was scared shitless except for the drunk people who were too busy setting off the fireworks to notice fear. There was another group of drunk people who were actually tossing fireworks down from the street into the subway stations, blindly. It was like being mini bombed. Carlos freaked out, and we ended up taking a cab to Ritterstrasse 42, a warehouse that excels in throwing banging electro parties. The line for eintritt was about 100 people long, and the cover was a whopping 25 euro. Having gone through so much to get there, we decided to fork over the cash. In return we were granted entry to 8 different rooms and over 30 different musical acts. There was techno, electro, and hip hop performed by muppets. There were also swarms of drunken tourists. Two of the tourists were nice enough to share their drinks with the front of my blouse. Soaked and not nearly drunk enough to be passive about such a thing, I forced myself to spend a miserable 3 hours attempting to dance in a crowd of 6 ft. somethings who kept elbowing me in the head before giving up and going home. It's 5 now. Aude and Marine are still at the club. I hope they are faring better than we did. Carlos and I took a bath and ate some fancy cheese. Tomorrow I think I'm staying in. I have no new years resolutions to speak of, aside from finishing up the myriad of projects I started this year. Carlos has two resolutions. 1) To Not Die 2) To Figure Out Why He Is Living In Berlin. I already solved the second one. I'm living in Berlin to figure out why I wanted to live in Berlin so badly. I haven't quite put my finger on it. Sometimes I think the answer is pure insanity, sometimes a lack of direction, lack of money, abundance of creative spontaneity. Not quite sure. Nights like these make me hate Berlin, make me feel like a permanent tourist, like I'm living in an expat playground. I still don't think the U.S. is better, but it is definitely, in some ways, more comfortable. And I miss my friends.

How was everyone else's Silvester? Any resolutions made? Mysterious strangers kissed?