Author Archives: Niki

Marco, Roger and I went outside on New Year’s Eve this year to see the fireworks being shot off this year. Here are some of the photos I took, although in some cases they are a bit blurry.

A photo of the fireworks sparking up as someone stirred up the fire with a stick:

Christmas trees usually end up in most fires as you can see in this family photo:

Random look at ground fireworks:

Random look at fireworks from a distance:

Someone was stupid enough to try and drive their car over a fire in the middle of the road. They drove through quickly and then got out to inspect the damage. Admittedly those streets are narrow and it would be almost impossible to turn around.

Building a fire (early on in the evening):

Here’s a look at a the remnants of the fireworks surrounding a bike, the day after:

Until next year’s festivities!

Blog post title is a reference to a quote from The Simpsons: “Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it!”

It’s that time of the year again. Time to buy fireworks!

Of course the Dutch take New Year’s celebrations to the extreme. A fireworks complaint hotline had 17,000 complaints within 2 days of it opening (10 days before New Year’s). The American government emailed their usual warning to US citizens in the Netherlands (link from 2014, but it’s pretty much the same this year). The city website has safety measures, which includes a list of fireworks-free zones in The Hague.

And yes, the prices in the flyer above are insane!