The same procedure as every year

Dear Fiends,

In Germany it’s already 2012 ;P – yay! Now, everyone living on the other sider of the Big Pond (aka The Atlantic Ocean) let me help you pass the time until midnight and the beginning of the new year by introducing you to this very special German New Year’s tradition.

“Der 90. Geburtstag oder Dinner for One” (The 90th birthday or Dinner for One) is a short British cabaret sketch from the 1920s with May Warden as Miss Sophie and Freddie Frinton as her butler James. Back in 1963 the NDR recorded it in Hamburg and since 1972 it has been a German tradition to watch this black-and-white English-language sketch on New Year’s Eve.

Unfortunately I couldn’t embed the version recorded by the NDR. The video above is the version recorded by Swiss television and it is a few minutes shorter than the German one. If you wish to watch the NDR version though just click here you will be taken to their official website to view it.

I hope you had fun watching. See you next year ;P

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What you call resolutions

Dear Friends,

2011 is only only a scarce day away from being completed. For me and I’d say for many other’s as well that means it’s time to make up your mind about the dawning year. Many people resolve to make healthy changes

How dare I think that was it

Dear Friends,

The plan for today was to talk a bit about New Year’s resolutions since 2012 will be here shortly. That was before checking the mailbox this morning. Now, just look what I found:

Yes, a Christmas card! Why had I even dared to think that had been it when posting my supposedly ‘last’ Christmas-post on Monday. Life simply had to prove me wrong, I guess. So I will be postponing my New Year’s resolutions to honour this very cute and unexpected Christmas card from Alena.

Alena had sent me this beautiful card from London in October. I loved it and I love this one just as much, mostly because it was such an utter surprise to me. I hadn’t thought that she would feel obliged to send me a card back when I send her a card in response to the one she had sent me through postcrossing. It is so sweet of her and now I feel obliged to get something in the mail for her.

For New Year’s Eve she is going to her family in Russia. She is especially excited to be able to show her grandmother her ten-month-old son. He is her grandmother’s very first grandson!
I wonder if there are any Russian New Year’s traditions… maybe I’ll ask her when writing my response.

Now I hope that this has really been the last bit of Christmas 2011, and that we can begin to really focus on what’s lying ahead of us: The year 2012!

Cheers,