In the early morning of July 7 we were blearily completing our morning routine (change/feed baby, make coffee, take dog for potty, get bakery croissants, check e-mails…). As we sat down at our respective computers a loud-speaker (& I mean LOUDspeaker) announcement interrupted our still-sleeping thoughts.
If you’ve never heard a police loud-speaker belting out warnings in German you’re a very lucky person, I thought WW3 had started!
The van commanding “citizens to evacuate the area due to discovery of a 250kg bomb from WW2 in a local construction site” Aaak!
So, did we pack-up the baby, the dog, our still-in-pjs-morning-breath-selves & evacuate?
Of course not! Thanks to a brief search on Mr. Internet we found that the bomb was actually found the day before so our logic was: if there was a real threat they would not have waited nearly 24 hours to evacuate the people in the local area. We stayed in our pjs and didn’t answer the buzzer when they rang to ‘evacuate’ us to a restaurant in the old town.
Our 82 year old Great Aunt lives even closer to the site and when the polizei rang her bell she answered and they shuttled her off to the safety of the restaurant. I’m pretty sure the cops got more than a few free cups of coffee & donuts for all the customers they provided the otherwise deserted restaurant that morning!
Peering around the blinds we saw only police & emergency crews….and a mere 30 minutes later it was all over and everything was back to crowded sidewalks & traffic clogging up the streets!
Read the Berliner Morgenpost article HERE (in German)
Grab all of my life in Germany posts right here!
