How come you didn't plan anything for New Year's Eve? I hear this discussion more and more often around me. It's October and if you don't know where you're spending New Year's Eve, it's all wrong. I think I haven't had this problem for about four or five years! Where I spend New Year's Eve is no longer so important, but the people who are next to me that night are everything. As for the party venue? It is established two or three days before.
The journey between two cities with the longest layover
If you like experiences and want to have a memorable New Year's Eve, I advise you to read carefully what madness we did. Together with two friends from Bucharest , we were trying to find a different New Year's Eve. We kept looking for destinations with unimaginable discounts (of course we didn't find any), cities in Europe where it was warm because we wanted to spend New Year's Eve on the terrace, spectacular fireworks and other ingredients. Google didn't really help us! Either everything was too expensive, or we couldn't find accommodation or we couldn't fit it into our free days. As if out of the blue, an idea came to mind: let's look for the cheapest flight between Bucharest and a European capital.
The terms of the search were simple: departure on the evening of December 31 from Bucharest, return on January 2, one night's accommodation, at least two countries visited in this marathon. Don't forget - and the ticket should not cost more than 150 euros per person. After scouring all the search engines for air travel, we managed to plan our New Year's Eve Travel. Great attention to searches: we were not careful and took the return after a year and not after two days of partying. Luckily, a nice lady from the call center understood that we didn't really have a way to take our 12-month layover 🙂
December 31
16.00 - departure Otopeni
17.25 - arrival Zurich (Switzerland)
New Year's Eve Party - Europe's Biggest Fireworks (Lake Zurich)
January 01
07.30 – departure Zurich
09.00 – arrival in Paris
One night's accommodation
January 02
18.05 - departure for Paris
19.20 – arrival Frankfurt
01.15 - arrival in Bucharest
Each couple had a backpack (underwear, socks, t-shirt, perfume, deodorant, no shampoo, shower gel because you can find them in the hotel) plus another piece of luggage for all four of us (a backpack that we were going to abandon after it fulfilled its mission - to carry our cheap drink bought in Romania to expensive Switzerland).
The hold luggage full of drink left before us in Paris, and we were waiting for it in Zurich
Happy and eager for adventure, we set off on New Year's Eve. When everyone was taking their shiny clothes out of their closets, we were getting dressed for the trip. While we were enjoying the perfect taste of the Swiss chocolate we received from Swiss Air, we heard the pilot's voice announcing that we would land in Zurich.
We were standing in front of the baggage claim line, wondering if ours would smell like Jack Daniels, Red Bull and Moet. That was pretty much the contents of our checked baggage! And we waited for our baggage to arrive for about 40 minutes and it still didn't arrive. No one thought that we would lose our drink on the way, especially since we had a direct flight, there was little chance of losing your luggage. And then the employees of the Otopeni airport left us without the cheap drink. We reported the loss of our luggage in the hope that it would never be found and that the Swiss would send us a "congratulations" on January 1 or 2 for 300 euros, money that we intended to spend in Paris. And since we knew that Switzerland is an expensive country, we refueled with alcohol from the duty free. My advice - there is no point in transporting the drink from Romania , I bought it cheaper from the airport shop than at home. From the airport to the city center of Zurich, the place where we were going to spend New Year's Eve, we took public transport. Your destination must be the Central Station (Hauptbahnof). In 20 minutes we were already walking along Bahnhofstrasse, the main commercial artery of the city. Shops with select brands, buildings that look like cartoons, watches, cleaning! The girls stared at the windows full of discount ads, but sighed when they noticed that a simple scarf with a 70% discount cost 3400 euros. About 30 minutes walk from the Central Station to the lake shore where the fireworks are organized. I don't know how it happened that in those 30 minutes our bottle of Jack Daniels was consumed alongside the Red Bull, and the Moet champagne had a specific fate - to be opened at midnight so that we could have it next year like the Swiss.
Forced by the two degrees Celsius and a frozen Mocan rain, we started visiting the mulled wine racks by the lake. Don't be shocked when you pay 24 lei (6 francs) for a glass of mulled wine and 40 (10 francs) for a hotdog. It would not be bad to stop at the Central Station to buy sandwiches for the hours you will spend in the cold. The prices are much lower than the place where the fireworks are held. We didn't have any chance to find any restaurant open to the public that evening and we didn't even manage to make a reservation for New Year's Eve.
The biggest fireworks display (I've seen much bigger ones) in an oppressive silence
Near midnight, we arrived at the sea of people filling the shores of the lake. Among us were walking policemen carrying placards with a simple message: don't light fireworks, we have enough. We set our watches and waited for the world to be excited about the big moment. The four frozen voices who came especially from Romania for New Year's Eve in Zurich counted with the volume turned to the maximum. We arrive at midnight, happy and joyful. All around us there is silence and we feel that thousands of eyes are looking only at us. We were the only ones counting and enjoying. In Zurich, tradition says that you enjoy the transition to the new year only after the bells have finished ringing at the many churches in the city. And at 00.07 when the bells finished ringing, we expected the world to burst with happiness. We were wrong! From the middle of the lake on large barges, thousands of fireworks began to go up into the sky.
People's reaction as cold as the air temperature: they applauded almost silently and that's it. And this was about New Year's Eve in the open air in Zurich. I advise you not to have too high expectations! After the fireworks show, it was like on Navy Day, we had to waste four hours in a seemingly deserted city.
The Swiss dance from the chair, maybe only with their feet under the table
Eat ice cream, we wandered around the old center of Zurich in search of a bar where we could continue our Swiss New Year's Eve party. The restaurants closed at one hour after midnight. Reading the restaurant menus, I saw that the New Year's Eve dinner does not close like we do on January 2, but at 02.00 on January 1 🙂
We find a bar with a few tables outside, mulled wine and full of people inside. We manage to get a seat next to the DJ, and after a few glasses of wine (6 francs a glass - where are you, backpack with the drink) we start dancing. And the Swiss in the bar next to us were having fun: we were dancing and they were looking at us and tapping their feet. At one point, one of them comes to us and asks us where we are from and only then says "they really want to have fun"
It's four o'clock and in a heartbeat, but with much less money than when we came to Zurich, we head to the Central Station to continue our journey to Paris. But what to see: public transport does not work on the night of December 31 to January 1, although the tables showed that the trains run without problems. And then I took the taxi - an extremely sad experience. On the way, the driver asks us where we are from, we answer that we come from Romania especially to spend New Year's Eve in his country. "If you are from Romania, you have money for a taxi" Only after he realized our reaction, the taxi driver apologized, probably for fear of making a complaint to him.
Paris seems extremely cheap to you after 8 hours spent in Zurich
Sunrise caught us in Paris. Two fresher because we managed to sleep on the airport benches, one recalcitrant and bad and the fourth who was trying to reconcile everyone. I recommend you try to sleep how and where you can when planning such long-term experiences !
Only after a French breakfast ended with a healthy portion of macarons did we recover. In the 36 hours spent in the capital of France, I can tell you that we ate and drank as much as we could in Zurich, and when the bills came for 20 euros, we thought we had made the best deal. Differences: a glass of mulled wine in Zurich 6 francs, a glass of champagne in Paris 3 euros J And also in Paris, the friends from Swiss Air announced that they found our backpack with the drink. "Your luggage has arrived in Paris. Well, we're here, we're taking it over! Well now he left for Bucharest. OK thank you"
New Year's Eve, sorry January 1st, continued with an evening in which we caroled the spectacular Paris, and the evening of January 2nd caught us in Frankfurt. Unfortunately, the layover was much too short to allow us to escape to the city and we admired the planes taking off for about two and a half hours.
Bucharest greeted us with a backpack full of booze that traveled on the Romania-Switzerland-France-Germany-Romania route.
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