I wish you all a happy new year, and I hope you had a good New Years´celebration. Before I start, I want to say that, I am seldom, if ever, serious when writing (sortof like doctors when they write out prescriptions). But my point is, what follows is completely serious. There are many stereotypes about dutch people, and all of them are that they are weird. This is simply not true. They are fucking crazy. (I also seldom, if ever, swear, but I´m already breaking my first rule). Now you might remember my little spiel about the Dutch being obsessed with annoying flashing lights and child-droppingly cheezy Christmas songs, but even these have a certain charm to it. When it comes to New Years, however, The Dutch turn into lunatics.
Okay, I dont literally mean all the Dutch are lunatics, just the ones who spent a combined estimated 70 million Euros worth of fireworks (roughly 140 million NZ dollars) , and let them all off outside my window. The reason for my agitation could be the fact that on New Years eve, by some torturous turn of murphy´s law, I woke up feeling as sick as I´ve been in years. I was bedridden and just needed to sleep, but this had to be the worst day possible to get have a stinging headache. Now, 70 million Euros worth of fireworks wouldnt be a huge problem in, say the Australian outback. But Holland is a matchbox of a country, with I´ve heard, one of the highest population densities in the world.
70 million Euros worth of fireworks also wouldnt be a problem if they was, say, 580 million sparklers. But oh no. The Dutch seem to prefer fireworks with a lot of noise. See, the fireworks in New Zealand just fart out a few different colours, but in Holland... Well, lets just say that of of that 70 million, 20 million is thought to have been spent on illegal fireworks. Fireworks designed by the Chinese, terrorists, or some crazy kids like the ones found by police with a garden shed full of "New Years celebrations" that could´ve made Holland on average one more metre below sea level.
It also wouldn´t have been so bad if the 70 million dollars worth of fireworks all went into the air at the same time. It might sound a little bit crazy, but perhaps we could agree on, say, midnight? Im not exactly what the law says about letting off fireworks in Holland, but there is only a few hours on New Years day. Of course, it would would be stupid to set off fireworks during the daytime anyway. Right?
Well, far be it from me to say what is stupid. All I know is, I woke up in the morning sick as anything, to the sound of constant explosions. There were gangs or roving youths, thugs dragging huge santa-like bags of explosives around, and letting them off as quickly as they could. (For all purposes sake it would be more convenient to ask America to do another pre-emptive strike on our behalf, but I wont go there). I am not exaggerating when saying that I doubt there was 20 seconds that went by that I couldn´t hear explosions. This went on from 9am to well after midnight. It honestly sounded like a warzone. This made for a very productive day of bed rest.
Luckily, there were some people in Holland who can read the time, and from midnight to 12:30 there was a magnificent amateur light (and noise) show, in my gradad´s usually peaceful neighbourhood, and beyond into Rotterdam. This gradually died down, and by 2am, there were momentary silences that interupted the noise of explosions.
To give a general idea: The forecast for New Years day was overcast, 7 degrees and fog due to firework smoke. All the post boxes in the country were nailed shut for the last few days because in previous years thousands had been blown up. And generally it was a peaceful celebration with only 3 deaths in Rotterdam. So it has been a very interesting (and/or Dutch) New Years. And now that the fog, the ringing in my ears, my headache and my cynicism has gone away, I wish you all the best for 2006.
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