Silvester in Wien

For New Years Eve, Reesa and I decided to see what was going on at the Graben. Someone told us people come from all over Europe to see this. We though we just had to make it out to see what all the fuss was about...us and about a million other people.

At first it was real neat. I felt like I was in Town Square. We walked with the mad mass of people towards the center of the city. Every few blocks there was a different live band. It was great because everyone else knew the words and we had never even heard the songs before.

However, the more we walked the more we were leary of what we had gotten ourselves into. The fire works were less than applealing. Since there was no organized show, everyone just shot up their own fire works in the mist of the crowd. It sounded like we were in a war zone. Then you'd walk a few feet and you would see someone light something and you'd duck for cover and plug your ears. People were using the liquor bottles they had just emptied to shoot off bottle rockets. One of those times, something had gone wrong as we saw green glass falling from the sky. This was when we decided this wasn't our cup of tea and started back home...against the crowd. We'd walk a few feet and see some drunk kid with a lighter, scream and grab each other and walk quickly the other way.

Finally, we made it back to our U-Bahn stop and felt we were safe. However the smoke coming out of the U-Bahn station made us wonder if they were shooting them off in there. We walked down the stairs to a guy pointing a firework directly at a group of people pretending to hold them hostage. We walked as close to wall on the other side but really wanted to get out of there.

FINALLY, we were on our U-Bahn...with all the old people who knew better than to get out with that crowd. We were actually on the U-Bahn at midnight and missed the big hoopla. We got off at our stop, so glad to have made it home but again the smoke had us worried. As we walked up the stairs we saw men laying fire crackers over the entire ground lighting them all at the same time. It looked like our exit was in fire. We had to go out a different exit and walk around. Here's what we saw:

We quickly crossed the street where there were more people lighting things and ran to our door. Finally we were safe at home! Next year, I think we'll just stay in. :-)