New Year's Hangover

We stayed in all day yesterday just to be lazy (and partly because we really enjoyed the wine and champagne on New Year's Eve). Today, we were getting a bit of cabin fever and ventured out into the city for lunch. It was definitely clear that the city itself was definitely still hungover from ringing in the new year.

Munich is a clean spotless city. This is one of the things we hear the most when we have visitors: 'Wow! The city is so clean!'. It's true. Munich is clean, friendly, and safe. We love living here and we love our life here. Among these wonderful features, the city is orderly. People follow rules and laws. And rarely do you ever see people behaving unruly or do you see headlines about violence.

With all of this, New Year's Eve seems to be the one day of the year when all of the rules go out the window. Everyone is up to the wee hours of the morning, shooting off fireworks in the street and drinking heavily to welcome in the new year. So, it is no wonder after this one night of crazy, wild parties, not only the citizens (and visitors) of Munich need a couple of days to recover, so does the city.

Today when we went out it was dark with low clouds and the occasional snowflake was falling. As we were walking around, the usually squeaky clean streets we noticed that the city was definitely not itself today.

This was the scene in front of a popular restaurant down the street from us. It's the remnants of a great new year's party complete with spent fireworks, champagne bottles, and empty cigarette packs.

But, don't worry, this will all be cleared away by tomorrow and the city will be recovered and back to itself.

I hope that you all have recovered from your celebrations!