It's a New Day and a New Year

Good Evening Herr Goethe!

And a Happy New Year!

                I’ve watched the Neckar River, the Old Bridge, the water front, the sky come alive. For hours young and old gathered, by the hundreds, and burned fireworks last night. An hour into the New Year, I still heard screams of joy and saw thundering multi-colored explosions light the darkness. When I opened the double-paned window the smoke was intense and the roar of the crowd was deafening. By midnight thousands had occupied the Alte Bruecke, the Old Bridge, the streets, and the parking area around the hotel. Occasionally I witnessed a fiery missile land in the midst of beer-bottle or champagne toting youngsters and uncensored revelry arose.  Germans know how to celebrate and don’t seem to have the same safety concerns as Americans; only a few of the elderly bystanders stepped cautiously around burning, still exploding objects. I am very happy that I was able to witness such a spectacle from the warmth and comfort of room 225 at the Hollaender Hof. It took three trains, two of them late due to weather conditions, and a cab ride with a young man from Sarajevo, but I made it to my favorite Heidelberg  in time for the celebration.

                “We were waiting for you” I was told by the receptionist as soon as I dragged myself and my suitcase into the hotel lobby. She knew I had been here before several times and treated me like a familiar guest.

                After unpacking I took a quick walk through the neighborhood before I began to observe the crowd that gathered below my room in the street. By one thirty in the morning I yawned noisily; it was time to get a few hours of rest. Little did I know that I would sleep until almost ten.  A look at Philosophers Way that zigzags across the mountain in front of one of my windows told me that Heidelberg would show me its weekday rainy face and not woo me with sunshine. A look out the other window offered the expected Japanese tour group admiring the Bridge.

         

       At breakfast downstairs I reflected on my approach toward writing for the next few days. I decided  I would not send letters to you unless something out of the ordinary happened. Writing about Heidelberg would be a repetition of past observations, I thought, but immediately I laughed, because the New Year’s celebration was an unfamiliar event. Seeing a young woman in short sleeves caught me by surprise; everybody in Weimar had entered restaurants in full winter gear and had only shed one layer, to be able to sit at a table.  That I was able to breathe without the filter of a scarf was something out of the ordinary to me after three weeks in the frosty winter air of Thueringia. Even not having to empty my own waste basket, being supplied with juice and mineral water, with chocolates on my bed, with a bathrobe, those are new experiences. Finding the streets cleaned after they had been trashed by the celebration during the night surprises me. Even seeing the castle over the rooftops shrouded in fog, gives me a feeling of a new beginning.  Happy 2011 to you, Herr Goethe.  Happy new beginnings in the city we both love.

Ihre Gisela