Ms. Engelke, Mr. Brandt, how do you celebrate New Year's Eve?MATTHIAS BRANDT: Ritualized celebrations are rather alien to me. I'll probably go to bed at ten o'clock on New Year's Eve. That's pretty much the only day of the year that I do that.

Why? Do the firecrackers bother you?BRANDT: I live in the suburbs, we hardly ever firecrackers, it's tolerable. But this accounting by date is alien to me, I always thought it was stupid. It probably has its roots in the fact that when I was 18 or 19, I noticed at New Year's Eve parties that the celebrations were mostly full of catastrophes.

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