Munich’s Night-Life
August 29, 2012
There’s been quite some excitement here during the past few days, thanks to the discovery of an old WWII bomb found here in Munich, fairly close to our apartment. The bomb, unearthed at a construction site on Monday, had been dropped on the city during an allied bombing raid some 70 years ago and had failed to explode. So, around 3,000 people were evacuated from their homes and this portion of the city was fenced off. A team of experts tried to deactivate the bomb, but without success. That left one option: the bomb must be detonated! We were laying in bed last night just about asleep when we heard the explosion. Here is a video of last night’s explosion, or, as a friend of our’s put it, of Munich’s night-life:
[...] Last week , they discovered an unexploded World War II bomb not far from where we live (about 4 subway stops away)! The funny thing is that it didn’t seem to be that big a deal to people around here! I know if they discovered an unexploded bomb in America there would be an uproar! There was a little debate as to what to do with the bomb, but the did decide to explode it. The night that they exploded it, we heard the explosion – I think it was around 10ish at night. I turn to Andy in bed and casually say: “I bet that was the bomb going off.” We chuckled, but the next day it turned out that it really was the bomb! CRAZY! So, I was talking to a guy from the Collegium about the bomb and I was asking about the people who lived near it. He casually told me that it was just buildings that had been destroyed (people’s homes!) and that the people who had been displaced were in some temporary housing. No big deal!! They think that there are a lot of unexploded WWII bombs throughout the city that have been buried over the years! You can read more about the details of the bomb from my husband’s blog: http://bowdenblog.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/munichs-night-life/ [...]
Very interesting experience, I guess. They have a somewhat similar problem in the Canadian Rockies. The Canadian military fires artillery shells into the snow pack on the mountain sides to produce controlled avalanches during the winter. Sometimes these shells don’t explode. In the summer hikers often find these unexploded shells and report them to the authorities. These shells are then detonated so that they don’t inadvertently hurt anyone.