If you sat and viewed German TV (both commercial and public) news yesterday, all of the fireworks mess from Silvester (31st of December) was displayed. I probably watched at least 40 minutes of video from various cities across Germany. Firemen, ambulance crews and police.....attacked in various ways. Several mayors came on for interviews and blasted the behavior seen.
From my prospective, it was like a hundred thousand five-year old kids in adult clothing were handed rockets and fireworks....with no motivation to be 'safe'.
What'll happen now? I would suggest three things:
1. The cities are going to put pressure on the states (16 of them) to pass legislation to effectively ban the sale of fireworks in the future. It'll be a simple text....zero sales.
2. Cities themselves will put up laws that establish any use of fireworks against rescue crews, ambulance personnel, police or firemen....gets you x-amount of time in jail (probably a minimum of six months).
3. I would suspect that the federal system will identify border points where people might buy in Poland or Czech.....identifying the transport into Germany....will be illegal and you could lose your driver's license.
Most of the highly urban Silvester events I've been around (1978 and 1984 in Frankfurt, 1995 and 2001 in Wiesbaden)....you felt completely safe and none of this crazy use of rockets being fired at people. This has developed over the past decade, and I would suspect that alcohol has made a lot of younger guys 'stupid' enough to behave like little kids.
It wouldn't surprise me if Berlin (the city) goes and bans alcohol sales at shops/grocery operations from mid-day on...on the 31st of December for this year.
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