2010- The year of the firecracker

Last night I got back from my four day trip to The Netherlands.
It was really nice getting away from Sweden for New Years and celebrate according to their traditions. Not that there were alot of differences from the way people celebrate in it Sweden. People still dress up, sit down and have a really nice dinner while drinking some nice wine and two hours before countdown the heavy liquor appears on the tables and everyone is in their happy-mode. There is always one person in the group (me) who keeps track of the time to make sure that no one misses the countdown.
This is probably very common in many countries, but here comes the differences between the dutch people and regular people. ( I love that by the way, referring to people as "regular" )

30 minutes before the countdown, one, two or three persons from each party walks out of the party with 3 huge boxes of firework. These boxes probably caused each person a 300 Euro increase in their bank account as well. So if you have a street where 10 families live in a nice quiet little area, on new years eve, you all of a sudden have 30 boxes of heavy firework at the value of 3000 Euro!
It is absolutely wild how they go crazy with their firework and it goes on for hours.

According to tradition, my mother has told me dress up, get all my chores done, eat well and remember how happy I am because the way I feel during the countdown and the transition between the years will effect the new year to come.
SO, here is what happened 2 seconds after everybody screamed : Happy New Year! I piece of a firework-rocket suddenly starts flying at me and hits my the inside of my lower leg and I got burned. Luckely I was wearing pantyhose that eased my burn but my right leg will now forever be marked with a nice little scar from the year of 2010.

This is the year of the firecracker I told my mother. She looked at me, smiled and said: That means this will be a really good year for you!