New Years Eve
Having finished our day trip to Pompei we were sitting at the Pompei train station exhausted after another long day and lots of walking. As if we should have expected anything else, the regional train that we needed to take back to Napoli for the connection through to Roma was running late. This significantly reduced the chance that we would make our connection in Napoli. When it did arrive and took us to Napoli, we were two headless chickens running through the train station in search of the ticket office and then our subsequent train. With a stroke of luck we were on the correct train, complete with tickets in time. Anyone of the bemused locals who had bet on the crazed strangers missing their train lost their bets. 
The reason we were keen to be back in Roma was that we were meeting a friend of Michaella’s from Australia who is also living here in Italy. Marco currently lives in Brescia, north-east of Milano and had spent Christmas visiting family in Napoli. Marco has had a lot of the same experiences as us including battling unsympathetic bureaucracy etc… It turned out that we were both planning on being in Roma for NYE and made plans to meet up.
One of the first things to hit us about NYE this year was the incredible number of fireworks being set off by people who just have more fingers than they know what to do with. It started at Pomei earlier that day. Small controlled nuclear explosions, that at one stage had us considering if Vesuvius was about to make us into plaster casts, were let off at regular intervals. This continued throughout the day culminating at midnight. After midnight the enterprising street vendors who had set up stalls with all shapes and sizes of finger loosing fun were offering specials.
The thing about theses firecrackers was that they were more noise than show. In fact the VAST majority that we saw had no visual component to them. I think it’s more appropriate to call them from here on in “Bangers”.
After a small interlude at our apartment where we dinned on Chocolate Panetone and beer, we set of into the centre of Roma to try and find a good place to see in the new year. We had heard good stories about the pubs in the area immediately surrounding Campo de Fiori. Arriving there around 10 things looked promising with the presence of the following emergency services; Red Cross equivalent with a first aid tent, Ambulance, Fire Brigade and three different branches of the police. The Caribinari, Guardia di Fianzia (just in case anyone tried evading their tax responsibilities!) and the Policia Municipale. How they determined who intervened in any event I will never know.
Our previous snack wasn’t cutting it, we looked in at a few places only to discover that they were, quite (un)reasonably asking for an extra €2 for EVERYTHING ordered. We settled on Suvlaki/Kebbab and beer. Gourmet aren’t we 
After a desert of sugary combination of lolly bananas, raspberry liquorice and marshmellow snowballs curtesy of €5 that Vilija found in Piazza Navona we found ourselves back at Campo de Fiori. Here a crowd had appeared and formed a perimeter around a militarised zone into which an armoury of bangers were being thrown. The louder the bang, the louder the cheer emitted by the crowd. One particular one had the ground shaking, people holding heads and an ecstatic roar of shock!
5, 4, 3, 2, … 1!!! Bang, bang, bang as thousands of bottles of Spumante were popped open and sprayed on all those within a 10m radius. I have to give it to the Roman’s, they were definitely into celebrating the new year in a big way. It must be good luck to see in the new year with a spumante shower! Definitely good luck for all the dry-cleaners in the following days.
At midnight, Marco got a call from one of his many cousins and they happened to be just down the road in Piazza Spanga so we headed down that way. Well, we thought there were enough people at Campo de Fiori. To get to Piazza Spanga we had to battle half of Roma streaming in the opposite direction to us. By the time we arrived at Piazza Spanga we were left with impression that something huge had just happened. In place of the pashing roman teenagers and newly married couples present in the day was a carpet of broken spumante bottles, the smell of sulphur from firecrackers and an enormous number of people even after the half of Roma that we passed on the way there. It was quite a sight to be seen (and smelt!!). Marco quickly gave up on finding his cousin in the crowds and we hung around to take it all in.
All in all we had a great night and it was an experience and a half. The adrenalin helped spot smoking tubes thrown into open spaces and we got very good at avoiding the resulting explosion a skill that no doubt will come in handy again!?
I hope that all your NYE’s were fun and boozy as they should always be.
Tags: Italia, New Years Eve, Roma, Rome