See, I'd promised myself to write another blog before the holidays. By missing that deadline I've avoided writing pretty much what I always write about Christmas, which means you don't have to put up with another yada yada piece about rampant consumerism and all the stuff we eat at Xmas dinner. I guess my procrastination was my unintended Christmas present to my already limited pool of readers. Happy to oblige :-)
But: there's still New Years' Eve (which we in the Netherlands call OLD Years Eve). In this country there are two main features of celebrating New Years' - A: we purchase enough fireworks to make every street look like Beirut - while Hezbolla is having a spat with.. well, anyone else really, starting roughly at 10 PM. B: to work our way up to that, we consume inordinately large quantities of alcohol and inappropriate foods.
Since these are group activities we have to make sure that there is no necessity for tableware and flatware. The first round usually consists of (for the men) beer and/or Dutch gin, for the women it's wine or prosecco; and if there are any women over 70, possibly something called "advocaat" (egg nogg), or "boerenjongens" (meaning "farm boys") - a concoction of raisins in extremely cheap brandy that you normally would only use to remover sticker glue from your windshield.
Accompanying foodstuffs are: Salted peanuts, chips (only available in the flavors "normal" and "paprika"), cubed cheese (must have cubed cheese in the Netherlands, or it just ain't a party), slices of liverwurst. Dab of mustard on the side for those last two which always finds its way to any light colored garments you bought just for the holidays, and now are no longer returnable.
Second round: Coffee, tea, cake, cookies, apple pie. And: oliebollen. Oliebollen (Translated: "Oily Balls") are what happens when you add raisins to batter, form into tennis ball sized globes, and deep fry in last year's nearly black oil that was also used the year before that. The result is a dough bomb that should only be used in hand-to-hand combat, or to scratch your name into the dinner table. The next day they are worse, but still available AND obligatory at grandma's house.
Oliebollen will be eaten all evening - even when the third round returns us to cubed cheese and more savory snacks. It should come as no surprise that the inside of your stomach now starts to look like a medieval flotsam and jetsam, and starts to rebel. Churn, roil, hiccup, acid reflux, burp, and let's have another gin.
Nearing the countdown it's time to break out the fireworks, always containing large amounts of big and often illegal firecrackers. The only thing off limits is C4, mainly because it's not available. Since all this stuff is set off by lighting a fuse, this is also the moment where the men (this is a man business) will be issued a cigar to light said fuse. These cigars are invariably cheap, bad and taste like you've set fire to a baboon's turd (Not speaking from experience there).
What follows is a scene from Apocalypse Now. "Where's your commanding officer?" "Aren't YOU?" - substituting alcohol for LSD. Just think along the lines of: non-sober men using bad cigars to light fuses of already questionable fire crackers placed in hazardous locations. (When I was a teenager we'd stick 'em into a juicy pile of dog doo doo. Ooh, the fun we had - unless you didn't run fast enough.)
Suffice to say that the excitement combined with beer/gin/boerenjongens, combined with the prospect of things that go "bang" in the night makes every swinging Tom, Dick or Harry a potential hazard to mankind. I'm staying in, like I've been doing for years now. I'd rather have a beiroot canal.
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