I’ve banged on about Berlin before but that’s because it’s just so stellar. I’m going to impart here the tale of a plum New Year’s I spent there some time ago. It took an eleven-hour haul on the train with multi changes and a distinct gnawing hunger on account of someone (me) forgetting our food bag and someone (nameless) eating barbecue chicken across the aisle.

It was winter: naturally, being December. The fields skirting the city were so thickly blanketed in white you wanted to jump in and make big snowy footprints. Frozen creeks and lakes spotted with farmers out with their dogs; there were pine tree forests, villages with sloping snowy rooves. It was like a black and white photo, but one you need sunglasses to look at it's so bright.

Our eventual arrival some hours before the NYE countdown was celebrated by way of our pitiful attempt to build a snowman. Do you know how hard it is to build a snowman? In the movies it looks so easy: take a snowball, roll it around a bit and there you have it.

Well, let me tell you, there was nothing spherical about our frosty.

Time of birth: 9:36pm, Dec. 31st, 2005
Time of death: 9:46pm, Dec. 31st, 2005

In other words, no, he didn't even live to see the new year in. He didn't melt, either, and no, he wasn't kicked over by kid.

What happened was, we blew his head off. With a firecracker. (Well, a number of them actually.)

Obviously Frosty didn't know firecrackers are legal in Germany on New Year’s Eve, else he would have stepped aside.

After that we toddled off to the Brandenburg gate in the subway with a million others, walked a mile and there we were. The sky lit up, lights aplenty; the countdown began; the fireworks started. The fireworks ended; back to the subway with a million others. Home, with friends.

(Happy New Year.)