Gluckliche Neues Jahre! Happy New Year!

This year for New Years' Eve, we met up with a few of Johannes' friends- Roy, Grilli, und Lizzie and drove to upper Austria where Lizzie's parents have a home. She prepared dinner while we unpacked and got ready to head to her friend Anna's apartment which was downtown.

Once there, we cracked the champagne and beers and began getting dinner ready while we waited for Maria and David to arrive from Italy. Dinner was fabulous! We sat around the table and cooked pieces of meat, shrimp, and melted cheese on an electric grill in the center of the table. Each person prepared their own and then put this on bread along with different sauces, etc.

After dinner, we played a few games and drank some more while we waited for midnight to roll around. We also participated in a few traditional Austrian new year's eve activities which included 'Brause'- Vodka shots, melting lead shapes and dropping them into ice water, and choosing small glass good luck charms.Brause is like rough granulated pixie stick powder or kool aid in a packet. You picked your flavor, dumped it in your mouth, took a shot of straight vodka or schnapps, swished it around and downed it.


Each of us got to choose a small, hollow lead cast shape. We then took turns melting it on a special spoon over a candle. The melted lead was then poured into a bowl of cold water and the resulting hardened shape was supposed to match with a key that would determine your 'luck' for the new year.

We also chose small trinkets of handblown glass pigs. Pigs are a symbol of good luck and are exchanged on New Years eve by friends.

Just before midnight, we bundled up and headed one block down to the city center and the lake front, where hundreds of others had already gathered and fireworks were shot off.


We then headed to the bars for a few hours before taking a taxi back to Lizzies. We stayed up til 7am! Of course the next day involved a lot of sleeping and laying around. But overall, a FANTASTIC new years eve!