WWII Reminder

We weren't informed of this until this past weekend from our dinner guests, since we live in non-local-news-reading-or-listening-land here most of the time, and we felt kinda dumb for living under a rock, but...

{source}

They've been doing construction on our main train station for months and just two Fridays ago, workers uncovered a bomb from WWII while digging...dropped by British fighter jets in the mid-40's.  They had to evacuate a kilometer radius around the train station and detonate it! Nobody was hurt, but windows shattered, the train station clock lost a hand and some fragments flew several hundred meters.  Dang. Art now remembers hearing it that Friday evening and thinking it was thunder...which rarely occurs here and was not followed by any rain or storm. {Article here.}

Of course I'm kind of an idiot when it comes to this stuff and asked Art how in the heck that thing could still function, picturing it to look like a black ball with one rope wick.  Think coyote and the roadrunner style. 

I mean...kinda crazy.  And, while on this topic, I have to recommend this book:

I read this book in two days.  It's over 400 pages and if you knew my tendency to read a book here and there over the course of months and then maybe never finish it, you'd be impressed.  It's testament to how good it is and how in need of a substantial and well-written story (instead of another crap rom-com movie from the internet) I was.  

I don't read enough real books these days...don't make the time for it and instead most reading takes place on the internet or in magazines in short form where nothing requires too much thought or goes too deep.  I had sort of forgotten how wonderful it is to get lost in a book and what a great use of leisure time reading is.  It's good for the soul.  And it's not bad for the brain either.  

My friend, Lindsey, gave me this book after devouring it during our down time in the hotel in Prague almost two years ago.  I just now picked it up.  I recommend it.   It hits closer to home when you are living over here (or when you are traveling through Germany like she was when she read it).  I understood all of the German vocab scattered throughout.  I had a better feel for the culture she describes even though it was almost 70 years ago and obviously different.  

The book's a bit different since it's told from the German perspective and how everyday German women and families were impacted.  Not to compare to what the Jews suffered, but life for the German civilians wasn't so great either.  This story shows the sacrifices a German mother made for her daughter..and for prisoners of the camp. 

It made me grateful for the wonderful life we have and ashamed that sometimes I complain that we don't have a car or haven't gotten to travel much.  It wasn't so long ago that people right in this very spot were starving to death..or worse.  
 
It's not something people like to talk about, but it really wasn't that long ago and it's important to remember.  You can get much more of a reminder than a bomb.