New Year's Eve in Milan, it's midnight and people run through the streets setting off fireworks to celebrate the New Year. The city sounds the way I imagine Beirut used to; bangers and fire crackers ringing like distant gunfire. Actually not so distant, as it turns out, as the people in the apartment above this one are throwing lit fireworks off their balcony onto the road below.
When I lived in London this kind of behaviour would mean bother with curtain twitching neighbours and ultimately the Police, but not here. Here the motorists just weave a determined slalom between the Roman Candles and Jupiter fountains which are illuminating the middle of the road.
Despite the fact I was dog tired from the drive, I spent the hours between midnight (Italian time) and 2am leaning on the rail of the balcony watching the chaos and the slow flurries of Alpine snow.
The New Year is always a time for reflection on the past and new starts... the sheer unexpected weirdness of tonight's celebration really has driven home what this year is all about. I still haven't completely come to terms with the fact that I'm here... abroad, and more importantly that this isn't another holiday, this is it, this country is now my home and even something as simple as New Year's eve is now strange and unfamiliar.
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