New Year’s celebrations in Prague – it ain’t over ‘til it’s over!

Happy New Year - Pour Feliciter 2009

New Year's Eve I met a few friends for the evening. We started with dinner, which is not as easy as it sounds. Not having plans, we had to try a number of different restaurants before we could find one with an empty table. Czechs are usually very big on reservations, but on New Year's Eve, not only tables but entire rooms and restaurants were reserved. Once we found a place, we decided to linger until closer to midnight because it was cold. It hasn't been above freezing here in a few days.

A little after 11pm, we headed out. I had voiced a request to be somewhere in the middle of it all for midnight, since I have never celebrated New Year's in an urban area. And, I had heard about the Czech love of pyrotechnics and fireworks. We decided to head to Staroměstské náměstí, Old Town Square, first. The Christmas booths are still up so it's not a big open space. But, the Orloj, Astronomical Clock, is there so a lot of people would want to be there for the show.

Now, normally, on the hour, the orloj does a little act. Saints pop out of windows, a cock crows, horns are blown, etc. And normally, on any hour of the day, you can see a large crowd in front of it. And just about every time you can observe the crowd going through the same motions and sounds of delight, ahhs, and chuckles at it ends. However, at midnight, nothing happens. Many people do not know this and so hundreds of people would be crowded around. We decided that we didn't want to be caught in that so we headed for the river for fireworks. The city's official fireworks would be on New Year's Day/Evening, but we knew that we'd see something.

Walking through the streets was, in a word, fun. From every direction we heard bangs and pops. People were buying small firecrackers from the tourist shops. Other shops were closed, which I had never seen before because they keep very long hours normally. The atmosphere was completely high-spirited. And it wasn't that crowded; we could easily move. When we got to the river, we saw that Charles Bridge was packed full of people, and since they are doing construction on it, it would be worse than normal. So, we headed down a side street until we found a spot on a short wall where we could stand. We were directly across from the castle and had a good view of a number of neighborhoods. On the river were a large number of party boats.

We got there about 10 minutes to midnight and fireworks were going on in all directions already. But at midnight, the big show from the party boats started. To our left, there was a good show near the Národní Divadlo (National Theater) and on our right was more from the Letná Park area. Not to mention the small fireworks shooting off all around us. I've posted some video on youtube if you want to see the videos - the other one is linked below. But you can see that that the "fireworks" setting on my camera has done a pretty good job.

After the show at the river, we headed to Wenceslas Square, the location of the Czech's "Boston Tea Party" as I heard one tourist saying into his video camera. We had heard the explosions coming from that area all evening and we knew what to expect when we got there. At the top of the square, near the National Museum, was a stage but by now the show was over. As we walked up the square we had to be careful where we walked. If we weren't watching where we went, we might walk into a bottle rocket or something else being shot. These older men were set up in the middle of an open space and just setting off bottle rockets.

As we continued our way up, we heard the whistles, pops and bangs of rockets and crackers being set off in all directions. The entire city was covered in a fog of smoke and smelled like firecrackers.

We ended our night early but we planned to gather again for show the next night.

New Year's Day is the anniversary of Czechoslovakia splitting, called the Velvet Divorce by many. This year January 1 is even more significant for these two countries; the Czech Republic starts its tenure as EU President and Slovakia changed to the euro. At 6pm, the city was putting on its annual fireworks show. I had been out all day with some friends, starting with Chris at church. Throughout the afternoon, we kept picking up more people, and usually people from different countries. By the time we found a spot on the river with a view of Letná Park, there were 7 of us – 2 American, 3 Slovakian, a Mexican and a Ukrainian. The show was kind of disappointing, although it lasted for 17 minutes. It was supposed to show the flags from a number of world countries and end with a rainbow. I got the rainbow at the end but the rest was really abstract. 2 things though I want to comment on. First, everyone was silent, just watching, with a little applause at the end. When I've watched fireworks in the US, people ooh and ahh when something big and/or pretty explodes. Not here. Second, we got a bonus. The fireworks were set up in a park, with trees so it wasn't surprising when we saw a number of small fires break out. Not everyone saw it so we felt that we got a 'bonus' feature to our evening.

In all, I had a great New Year's celebration, definitely one of the best I've ever had. I highly recommend Prague for New Year's vacations for anyone who likes fireworks. You definitely get your fill!