All the best for 2010!!! I cann’t believe we are already a decade into the 2000’s! I hope 2010 brings you all the happiness, good health and financial security you are looking for.

As usual, we took it easy on New Year’s Eve. We are not big on party’s, which seems to be the most common way to celebrate New Year in Switzerland, as in many other places. We had a nice meal at home, watched some TV and watched the fireworks shot by individuals around us. The fireworks started as early as 21:00, but started getting really big at midnight with many people shooting of fireworks, some of them passing frightfully close to our balcony. In fact, we hardly ever saw as many fireworks for New Year as here in Zug!

We also went through a 750 ml bottle of DeuS beer. Well, it is not really a beer as it doesn’t appear to contain any hops. It is more a barley wine that gets served very cold (put it in the fridge for 12 hours followed by the freezer for 20 minutes before serving!) in champagne-type glasses. It’s had a very fruity flavor and has a high alcohol content of 11.7%. We enjoyed it for the special occasion, and the beer is a great replacement for champagne, but it is definitely not a beer one would drink on a daily basis.

We didn’t get any good pictures of the impressive fireworks that were happening all around us, but we did get some nice pictures at Europapark, which we visited last week on our way to Belgium. During winter, Europapark is very nicely decorated with tons of lights and special shows for the occasion, including an Asian dance/acrobatics show and a circus performance.

As always, you can click on the link to get a larger version of the photo. Below are two shots from the Russian part of the park. One is just a sparkly decoration, the other is the Euro-Mir coaster, decked-out for the holidays. The Mir is one of the earliest coasters that has a car which rotates as you move along the track.