Crazy Crazy

Overall we have found the Viennese to be very lawabiding. The usual answer to, "what's the fine for this," Is "I don't know. And I don't want to find out. " So it was rather odd to hear that so many people were preparing to "batten down the Hatches" so to speak, for New year's Eve. Apparently, people are just crazy at this time of the year.

Of course we just thought, yeah right. I'm sure they couldn't even come close to giving the English, Aussies or even the Kiwis a run for their money when it comes to being drunk or disorderly, or drunk and disorderly. What we hadn't factored into the equation was fireworks. They still sell rockets here. And because there are rules and laws for everything we thought for sure, the same would hold true for fireworks. Apparently not.

Vienna is all apartment blocks. We never for one minute thought people would let off fireworks amongst all this. But they did. And there were fireworks going off left right and centre. Poor Jordy even had an incident where some stupid lout threw a few double happys under her seat. Greg made sure that that young fellow understand just how unimpressed he was with this kind of behaviour. Some things can be very clearly understood whatever language you speak. Go Greg.

We did get to have a great view of the fireworks from the top of the University Chemistry building thanks to a good friend from church. It didn't take long before you couldn't see very far in front of you do to all the smoke from the fireworks. We stayed for half and hour and there was no sign of the fireworks slowing down.

The cool thing was though that extra U-bahn and Strassenbahns were run from midnight until about 6 am, for New years. U-bahns came every 15 mins. So getting home wasn't a problem except for worrying about the crazies with rockets. So next year we will be joining the other sensible people and staying home.