Happy New Year!
We spent the weekend celebrating the new year, but it was very different from our usual New Years’ eve. Usually, the week leading up to December 31st isn’t going so well. Anybody who even remotely knows a soldier with severe PTSD will probably understand where I am coming from, especially if you live in a country where it’s very common to start shooting off fireworks about a week before the new year. Chris hates New Year, so one of the reasons for booking Menorca for this first round of traveling was the fact that I heard it was very, very quiet on New Year’s Eve. I figured it was worth a try.
As expected there were 0 fireworks the week leading up to New Year’s Eve so that was a huge plus.
It was going so well that we were actually able to take a 10km hike on the 31st. Pretty great with the sunshine and the waves and absolute quietness around the cliffs other than the waves crashing against the stones.
We had asked our Airbnb host what was going to go on for celebrating the new year and he told us that pretty much everyone in our area was going to go to Ciutadella (the closest bigger city) to watch the fireworks.
So we figured it would be a good idea to go down to the beach to overlook the fireworks. Ciutadella is still a ways away from us so I figured we wouldn’t be able to hear anything but might still actually see the fireworks as there is not really anything in your way when you are standing on the beach.
And that is exactly what happened. For the first time in years, I was actually able to watch the fireworks with my entire family, including my husband. He was actually there for the countdown and – and this is most important – he was fine.
No, he wasn’t great just yet. There is a lot of anticipation going into this whole thing. Thinking that someone will shoot something or others around you at any given point is a trigger in itself. But my hope is that we can find remote places like this during all our travels so that he will continue to get better.
After that, we went back and continued with the traditions that we have always done. Have champagne together (or kids champagne for those of us under age or those of us who don’t like alcohol), including little pigs in the glasses. A crazy tradition of ours, we put little plastic pigs into our champagne glasses for New Year for good luck. And no, no one has chocked on one yet and we’ve been doing it forever even when the kids were less than toddlers.
Then we moved on to pouring lead. That’s gotta be another crazy german thing we do. You melt a piece of lead on a spoon over a candle. Then pour it into cold water. Take out whatever it formed, hold the shape between a white wall and a flashlight, and twist and turn it until you can see something in the shadow. You then check what the meaning of that shadow is. There are millions of “Bleigiessen” results online now, back in the day you just had about 20 things on the back of the packaging.
Thankfully people have moved on from the poisonous lead and are now using candle wax which is a much smarter alternative for both people and the environment, so we’ve been using that for years now.
It’s all for fun, we are not crazy superstitious, but the kids are having a blast every year.
Of course, we are not only focusing on old traditions. While we hold them dearly and will continue to keep them alive, we want to make very sure that the kids learn a lot while traveling. So whenever we are in a new country we are checking on the traditions in that country during the time we are there.
And that is why on New Year’s Eve, we live-streamed the bell tower of the Casa de Correos in Madrid and tried to stuff and cuck down one grape with every strike of the bell. That’s 12 grapes within a couple of seconds. One grape for each of the 12 strikes of the bell. It sounds easy enough, but it really, really isn’t if you want to time it just right. Go ahead and give it a try. But please don’t choke. Some of us made it, and others gave up after a couple of grapes. I will not name names…
But what a fun tradition for good luck in the new year. I simply love learning and teaching the kids about what is going on in other countries. And mixing those new traditions with the old ones we already have is just the greatest fun.
Researching for this blog post I found out that apparently in Spain you don’t just eat grapes to the sound of the belltower but you are also supposed to wear new, red underwear for New Years’ for good luck. Boys and girls alike. We didn’t know about this so just wore random underwear of all colors.
I guess now we’ll have to come back!
The boss, the general, and the brains of the operation. Anya is the mom of this crazy group of misfits. When not traveling the world and teaching her kids to be decent human-beings, she likes to bake, sing, be goofy. Aside from all that she does for Five of a Kind, she is also a short term foster mother for infants in need.
She also enjoys unreasonably spicy foods and is searching for a hot sauce that is spicy enough and yet still has some kind of flavor to it.
