And you thought you knew what a New Year's Eve party was.

That is, until you get to Amsterdam. There is a tradition of fireworks across the whole of Holland, but ''a tradition of fireworks'' really doesn't tell you the truth.

Imagine war. Stalingrad. Maybe Guernica. Now combine both, add howling Dutch people in the middle gleefully trying to outdo each other with crazy fireworks, industrial bombs, street rockets, bengal fires, and probably a man with an AK-47 using the general mayhem to shoot at the stars.

And it fucking goes on forever. three days before, it's like you live in Sarajevo during the war. a day before, you've moved up a notch - maybe Irak, second time around. And the night of, man it's insane. It really, really feels like a battalion is occupying the neighborhood while plans are bombarding farther away.

While lengthy, this shows you the right of it.


Given I have 3 people I know living in the city, my cunning approach was to borrow friends... I invited all of my sister's friends, and pretty much anyone I spoke to.

My little dutchie lady was otherwise occupied (''c'est une relation tarifée!'' entend-on du fond de la salle. Merci Florent pour ton admirable et élégant comment de mon dernier post, ta seul intervention se résumant a crier''PUTE''. ca va commencer un beau jeu cette histoire), and my colleagues having other plans, it really was a party with 20 strangers in my house. But nice ones.



the group before it got drunk.

Well, I do really get along well with Hendrik, Olivia's bf - even if he needed to prove his dutchiness by participating in WW3:




bear in mind he speaks french and lived in Paris. So his fireworks were little surrendering things compared to locals. I can affirm this because we had a missile-off in my street, every neighbor had his or her screaming children lighting missiles next to ours.... and theirs went higher and were louder.

proof!

we had a blast all around (couldn't resist that one), I have some moments i do not remember (like when I became Hendrik's evil soul:)



apat from that, usual zerozap NYE party - Pulled pork all around:



and decent amounts of bubbles.



the next day the city is VERY quiet. every street is littered with the remains of this very special ad crazy Dutch habit.



NUL. Happy and fun 2019 to all.