Hey buddies,

After the amazing trip to the Blue Mountains I was ready to move in the big city - Sydney. After a last good breakfast in Wagstaffe with the delicious selfbaked bread, I took the train to Sydney, where I was about to move in my new appartment.
I put my belongings under my table and immediately headed off to visit Dominik at his place. To celebrate New Years Eve in Australia style we had a really nice roof-top BBQ with temperatures over 30° and the sun shining :). We talked, shared our expierences and had a few beer. Around 6pm we made our way to Circular Quay, where we wanted to celebrate NYE.

For your information: Circular Quay is the area near Opera House with a perfect view on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The area is open to the public until 4000 people accessed the area - so you have to be early to get a good place. 6pm though is really late - we met people who were waiting since 7 in the morning... But since my good friend Dominik had his internship at a company that has his office at Circular Quay he got 10 Tickets. which allowe entry after the gates are closed to the public.
As you can imagine we were pretty suprised when we tried to get in and the security guard at the entry wouldn't let us in. Obviously we would have to pretend that we are currently working and only then could enter... We tried to get in at another entry, but were send to the entry we just came from. Nothing to lose we tried again, but went to another security guard and this time pretend that we were working at the moment - and he would let us in.

After this little thrill the next challenge was just about to come, when we wanted to enter the area that is facing the bridge (we were on the other side, where buildings covered the bridge). First they wouldn't let us in and send us to a queue to get excess. When we reached the "counter" we were told that our tickets aren't valid for this area.

With only one chance left to get to the right side of Circular Quay we went to Dominik's office building and luckily the security guard would let us in, so we could use the elevator and exit on the other side of the building that was facing the bridge.

After this 2 challenges there was only one challenge left - find a good spot. As I already told you, there were people waiting and camping since 7am - so therefore there was almost no good spot left and we walked around for at least half an hour, until we found a little space in the 3rd row, where we found enough space to sit down and wait. Between us and the water were just 2 families, so we hoped that, as soon as the fireworks start they will move closer to the water and we therefore could also get a little closer.

Before the sunset a little airplane wrote biblical messages in the sky - at first I was really excited until I saw that the messages refer to the bible :X...
At 9pm then the small fireworks for the kids started and that was already a hell of a show, even this little fireworks were better then most of the fireworks I've seen so far. It really made you want to see more :).

And after 3 more hours we were rewarded for passing the three taskes we were given to be allowed to see the fireworks - The countdown started and the show hit off and continued for 12min. Not only the fireworks from the bridge were amazing, but also the ones shot from the skyscrapers in the city and from Darling Habour. As hoped the families moved there stuff to the side and got closer to the water so we also could shuffel a little closer and had a really good view on all the fireworks shot from the diffrent locations.
It was a breathtaking show and one of the best, if not the best, firework-show I've seen in my life.

Sadly I won't be able to provide you with many pictures since I covered almost the whole show with my video-camera, but if you want to see the show - just have a look at google or youtube ;).

Anyway - after the fireworks all the people almost rush out of the area and left a huge amount of garbage on the streets, but the cleaning also started directly after the fireworks and when I went to Ciruclar Quay on the next day everything was tidy and clean, if you weren't there the night before you wouldn't have believed how it looked like - they are realy doing a good job here in Sydney with keeping their city clean.
Around 1.30am I ended up in front of Townhall, where a Hip-Hop Group was performing some really good moves, before I then went to my appartment to sleep there for the first time.

It was a really great day and a even better night with a really amazing New Years Eve show - definitly was worth all the efforts we had to put in getting there :).

Have a good one!