David Hasselhoff's New Years

Well, it has been an eventful first 12 hours in Berlin. My flight was uneventful, other than me pampering myself by eating too much. I easily met up with Carissa and Eric at the airport before we all met up with Ben and co.

Me pampering myself because I was able to get a Business Class flight with my Skymiles! yay!

The apartment is quite nice! I picked a good one. Has real beds for everyone and a nice bathroom and very clean! Overall, a great catch. Oh, and English television channels... Maybe they'll have one with the Alabama game on? If not, we have a contingency plan :)

Anyway, after dropping our things off, we got bundled up and headed to Brandenburger Tor (or in English, the Brandenburg Gate) where all the evening festivities would take place. And the lovely thing, its just a hop skip and a jump on the metro away! 

Tiergarten park around the gate was all set up and already had vendors open and a Ferris wheel and tons of food when we got there around 4pm. Because of the large crowd, we decided to eat around there and stay so we could get a good spot for the show. 

Typical German beer that our hosts stocked for us, the multilevel Berlin train station

Outside the Reichstag! Me, Carissa, and Eric then Jan, Mom, and Ben

We loved that the porto-potties were called Toi Toi's, a ferris wheel and me and Carissa!

So, yes, this means we were on our feet for a good 8-9 hours! We're champs! But were we entertained during this wait for 2015? Yes, but not because all the performers were good. Tokyo Hotel performed which was cool but there was also a man with a bald head and ginger beard who had the most ridiculous falsetto voice we'd ever heard. I literally don't know how someone decided he was a good idea. Or how he ever got popular? A lot of the artists were local groups and were good but I find music is more enjoyable when you understand the words, which alas, we could not for most of them. But... It was all worth it because

Drum roll please

DAVID HASSLLHOFF WAS THERE TO RING IN THE NEW YEAR! And yes, he performed. Complete with a costume that included a shirt with his face on it. And he performed Freedom and the Germans all loved him. Seriously, he was like the finale. You absolutely, positively cannot make this up. And the funniest thing to me, is I made a joke about David Hasselhoff performing and someone behind us heard me and was like, oh he is performing! Which just blew my mind. Until he actually performed and decimated my mind. Totally worth all the time on our feet. The Hoff is a legend, duh. 

The light show was FANTASTIC for the whole 9 hours

This guy in blue on the right was not. We think he had botox (or hope) because he showed literally no emotion throughout his performance. The fan of his on the left showed more emotion than he did...

We were this close to the emcees! and THE HOFF

Proof that he was wearing a shirt of himself. And New Years lights!

David Garrett, the famous violinist

After that, we decided to call it a night because turns out being on your feet standing around for 9 hours can take a lot out of you. We headed back for the metro but all the excitement was not yet over. 

Little did we know we would be encountering a war zone of Germans exploding their fireworks. Apparently, they can only buy fireworks from Dec 29-31 and it's only legal to shoot them from 6pm Dec 31 to New Years morning. So imagine The Purge, but with people with fireworks. Some people were respectful and shot theirs into the air for others to enjoy. And then there were the assholes who decided to throw them at people. Yay, intelligent life forms. 

But we survived and will live on for the adventures that tomorrow will bring!

And what is New Years without donuts???