Perhaps it's due to a more temperate climate that Germany gets bigger storms than we do here in southern Ontario, Canada. Our German landlord more than once had to replace roof tiles on our Iffezheim apartment building. The wind was something. The thunder & lightning was something else. I remember my pals and I being dropped off one day by the school bus right into a lightning storm. For some reason the atmospheric tumultuousness encouraged me to run for it ― friends called from behind. Off I went, my six or seven year old legs a blur, propelling me at warp speed down the sidewalk. Not long after my sudden acceleration everything became a bright white. A super flash. I mean everything in my field of vision; there were no shades of gray. The first thing that crossed my mind: I was missed by that much. Now I've modified it to: I almost met Big Sparky himself.
(Something about after-school storms.)
Cut to a year or two later.
After a long day at CFB Baden-Soellingen my sister and I departed the school bus at the usual place, right near Iffezheim's Roman Catholic church, St. Birgitta, and we made our uneventful way home. Suddenly the lightning started, quickly followed by the thunder. As we reached our apartment door, CRACK! My normally sedate sister emitted an awful scream. ("It's just thunder!") The scream was probably more a Penny Robinson scream than one as chilling as what I perceived at the time, but the point was made.
We came back to Canada and the thunder & lightning seemed less energetic.
In a way, I missed Germany.
June Bugs
"The skies were black!"
"You're exaggerating."
"Perhaps I am, a little bit. Okay, there were strips of black against blue sky. I've never again seen anything like that in my life."
My strongest such memory is of me sitting in the back parking lot of our Iffezheim apartment building. On a beautiful mid evening the darkening skies were blue, except where there were those "strips of black": mass flights of June bugs. As I sat on a concrete block I looked up at the dramatic aerial display above. Occasionally, the pretty brown little insects would drop about the ground around my outstretched feet. Mid-air collisions, perhaps. The bugs buzzed and rattled as they ended up on their backs, little feet outstretched. Of course, when one is young one looks with boundless fascination at nature; and its occasional random acts about. (As one gets older, one gets grossed-out.)
My return to Canada taught me something about nature: Canada, southern Ontario, at least, lacks June skies of certain bugs.
The skies were black!
At the back of the bus I heard a kid start to cry; he was sitting on the very end seat as he reached around to his backside. He had been stung by a wasp. He was seated waiting for the parked bus to finish loading up more schoolmates after a day at CFB Baden-Soellingen Elementary School, and that's what he gets for being a good and well behaved young man. I turned back to face the front and took in the sight of marshalling school kids. Not that I remember what I was thinking at that time but no doubt it was about wasps and how those buggers, even after even a modicum of human diligence and intelligence, would get you in the end... and sometimes in the end.
Wasps would build nests anywhere, it seemed. I seem to remember my German landlord having to constantly (and carefully!) remove nests from around the apartment building exterior during the summers I lived there. If there's a corner, there's room for an outpost or base of operations. I'm sure my then young brain would sometimes ask the big question:
"The skies were black!"
"You're exaggerating."
"Perhaps I am, a little bit. Okay, there were strips of black against blue sky. I've never again seen anything like that in my life."
My strongest such memory is of me sitting in the back parking lot of our Iffezheim apartment building. On a beautiful mid evening the darkening skies were blue, except where there were those "strips of black": mass flights of June bugs. As I sat on a concrete block I looked up at the dramatic aerial display above. Occasionally, the pretty brown little insects would drop about the ground around my outstretched feet. Mid-air collisions, perhaps. The bugs buzzed and rattled as they ended up on their backs, little feet outstretched. Of course, when one is young one looks with boundless fascination at nature; and its occasional random acts about. (As one gets older, one gets grossed-out.)
My return to Canada taught me something about nature: Canada, southern Ontario, at least, lacks June skies of certain bugs.
The skies were black!
Wasps
At the back of the bus I heard a kid start to cry; he was sitting on the very end seat as he reached around to his backside. He had been stung by a wasp. He was seated waiting for the parked bus to finish loading up more schoolmates after a day at CFB Baden-Soellingen Elementary School, and that's what he gets for being a good and well behaved young man. I turned back to face the front and took in the sight of marshalling school kids. Not that I remember what I was thinking at that time but no doubt it was about wasps and how those buggers, even after even a modicum of human diligence and intelligence, would get you in the end... and sometimes in the end.
Wasps would build nests anywhere, it seemed. I seem to remember my German landlord having to constantly (and carefully!) remove nests from around the apartment building exterior during the summers I lived there. If there's a corner, there's room for an outpost or base of operations. I'm sure my then young brain would sometimes ask the big question:
"Is West Germany all about the wasp?"
I never got it in the end. Not in West Germany, and certainly not here:
I never got it in the end. Not in West Germany, and certainly not here:
"Where are the wasps?! I mean, did they stay in West Germany?"
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