Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, or Silvester to the locals. They’re not directly analogous. Silvester is a religious holiday, the Feast Day of Pope Sylvester I. They both fall on December 31st, though. It’s traditional at this time of year to take a look back and see what you’ve accomplished over the last twelve months.

I visited these places that were new to me:

• Strasbourg, France
• Paris, France (This was in my 500 Days list.)
• Venice, Italy
• Rome, Italy
• Vatican City
• Zurich, Switzerland (Twice!)
• Dublin, Ireland
• Salzburg, Austria
• Cardiff Bay, Wales
• One Waterfall: The Rhine Falls
• Two Mountains: The Untersberg and the Zugspitze (This was in my 500 Days list.)
• Several Castles, including Schloss Neuschwanstein (This was in my 500 Days list.)
• Hannover & Minden, Germany
• Hamburg, Germany
• Wuppertal, Germany (This was in my 500 Days list. I went to see the hanging trains. I saw one, but it wasn’t running. My timing sucks.)
• Essen, Germany (For Star Wars Celebration Europe!)
• Freiburg, Germany
• Berchtesgaden, Germany
• The Dachau Concentration Camp
• Bavaria Filmdstadt (Where they made The Neverending Story!)

I repeat visited a few places:

• Frankfurt a bunch of times.
• Mannheim
• The United States twice, once in March and once in November.
• London twice.
• Nuremberg and Munich countless times because they’re the closest large cities and neat stuff happens here.

I saw some great concerts and shows:

• Jamaram (Munich)
• Peter Cincotti (Minden, near Hannover)
• Depeche Mode (Munich)
• Leonard Cohen (Mannheim) – This is the man who wrote “Hallelujah,” perhaps the most frequently covered song in existence.
• Tegan & Sara (Offenbach, near Frankfurt)
• Lindsey Stirling (Hamburg)
• Cyndi Lauper (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida)
• Doctor Who at the BBC Proms: The 50th Anniversary Prom (London, at the Royal Albert Hall)
• Danny Elfman‘s Music from the Films of Tim Burton (London, at the Royal Albert Hall)
• The Book of Mormon (London)
• The Rocky Horror Show (Regensburg)
• West Side Story (Regensburg)

I had some new experiences:

• The Tollwood Silvester Party
• 2013 European Sled Dog Championships
• The X-Games Rallycross
• Oktoberfest in Munich (This was in my 500 Days list.)

I had some other things happen that were interesting:

• I witnessed the Donau River flooding.
• I ate horse meat for the second time.
• I was Freshly Pressed for the geekiest post I’ve written so far on this blog.
• I broke 1000 followers on WordPress.com.

Did you have a good year? What’s the most memorable thing you did this year?