Coming from arid California, where just about any type of interesting fireworks are banned, it was a massive shock to see the fireworks displays that went on here in Poznań on New Year's Eve. Bottle-rockets are illegal in California, and the ones I remember as a kid were quite small. The launch stick was less than a foot in length and the propellant + explosive part was smaller in diameter than a pencil and maybe an inch in length or so. For the bottle-rockets sold here, the launch stick is about 3-4 feet long and the propellant + explosive is about the size of a Subway 6-inch sandwich. They go about 70-100 feet in the air and explode with quite a bit of noise and light. Needless to say, the fire departments in California would have collective apoplexy if they were available there.
Then there seemed to be some near-commercial-grade fireworks. I saw someone carrying what looked like a couple of coffee cans packaged together and have to assume that these were what were creating fireworks that weren't quite the size of the commercial displays in the U.S., but were pretty close. Take what we are used to seeing in the U.S. for commercial fireworks and reduce them in size by about a half, and that's what I was seeing in nearly any direction I looked. So they weren't commercial items that were put on by the government I don't think.
What this means is that the fireworks display on New Year's Eve seems to take place everywhere you look, and goes on for 30-45 minutes. I went out on my balcony and looked out towards the big apartment blocks on the other side of the river, and was able to watch a near-constant show of the bottle-rockets flying up, a large number of the bigger items, and what looked like a fair number of commercial-grade fireworks that were launched all over. My balcony doesn't look towards the city center, so I couldn't say if there was a specific fireworks display by the city, but it appeared that nearly every large (and not so large) apartment block bought at least a few large-scale fireworks of their own and launched them.
Between the younger folks who live in my complex using the park behind us to launch their bottle-rockets, plus all the other fireworks going off, it seemed that no matter which direction I looked that there were fireworks going off. It actually went on so long that after about 20 minutes I decided to stop watching and just go inside.
Who would have thought that I could be bored with fireworks? Is that a symptom that the little boy in me has grown up a bit too much? =)
Have a wonderful New Year's everyone. I hope your New Year's Eve was filled with joy and that you aren't paying too dearly today for any celebrating you did last night.
No comments:
Post a Comment