Mistyhilltops

Fire stations. They should actually be the safest places when it comes to protection from fire – not only are they crowded by lots of professionals, they also have all the equipment ready at hand. But look what happened today in the little town of Kandern, South Germany …

 

Kandern, shortly after 12 pm:
The sirens in town go off. I’m not paying much attention, since it’s common practice in Germany that every Saturday at 12 o’clock the sirens go off just to check their functionality. Except that today isn’t Saturday …

Five minutes later:
Someone from the upper floors of our building is yelling down to us that they can see smoke rising a couple of blocks down. Fire?

Five minutes later:
We have dinner plans for an Italian restaurant in town. We set out, but only two minutes after leaving, we’re approaching this scene:

Smoke is wafting shortly ahead of us. We walk faster, and quickly approach the town’s fire station. That’s when it dawns on us:

 

 

The fire station, which is directly on our way to the restaurant is on fire. No one has thought about closing the road from where we’re approaching, so we can get right to the center of the action:

 

Note the equipment with which the firefighters try to go against the fire: shorts and flip flops – this is firefighting in the summer!

Now, let me make things clear: In Germany we don’t celebrate the 4th of July on the 4th of July. As a matter of fact,  we don’t actually celebrate the 4th of July at all in Germany, since it’s an American holiday. This year, however, was different. This year, we didn’t just remember that somewhere in the world people are happy about the 4th of July, this year we actually decided to make it a happy occasion for ourselves (of course, there were enough Americans around to have a good excuse for that, too). And so we had blue, red, and white ice-cream and a whole lot of fun.

I’m sure that most people agree that a graduation is a reason to celebrate. This year we’re celebrating my graduation (though I’m not even that close to finishing yet). Still, I’m the kind of person who doesn’t mind celebrating something with a good dinner, some good fellowship, and a lot of laughter and tears. And since my graduation is next in line, and since my graduation is a good excuse to celebrate, I did exactly that: have fun and enjoy myself!

 

Yes, I’m back in Germany. And that means I get to enjoy some of the culinary treasures which are so very typical for Germany. Like Schupfnudeln and yes, Sauerkraut (though I’ll tell you a little secret – for those non-Germans among my readers: Germans don’t eat Sauerkraut all the time. As a matter of fact, in my family, Sauerkraut is a culinary rarity which only happens few times a year, if at all). And another little secret: the one cooking Sauerkraut this time wasn’t a German, just my very North American roommate who loves to eat Sauerkraut. Still, I’m happy about eating all these yummy dishes, and this time I’m not complaining that North Americans are so biased when it comes to Germans eating Sauerkraut.