wie ein krieg

tobi drove us to the party. then left his care there. he didn't want to leave it on the south side over new years (we make lots of jokes about ruth living on the "southside" of nürnberg). he said kopernikusplatz was "wie ein krieg," like a war. i imagine eggs and toilet paper, but when we took our sekt outside for midnight, i saw what he meant. there was already a low cloud of smoke, and everyone was setting off fireworks. not just sparklers and noisemakers, but real fireworks. and the sky wias filled with green and pink sparkling light. tobi said to me in english, this day every year makes the nürnbergers remember WWII. everyone esle rolled their eyes, but the big bombing of nürnberg actually happened january2. all the nois and the rockets did make it easy to imagine what war would be like, but all the people so calm and excited ruined that atmosphere for me. if it was war, we wouldn't say, oh how pretty! we'd be running for the bonb shelters.