Orkan Kyrill

We survived Orkan Kyrill on Thursday, January 18. For a good description of what an orkan is, click on the title, but in general it's hurricane-force winds that on Thursday swept through Europe. At first, Bob and I didn't think much of the storm, because we get strong winds in Chicago. But that night, each gust of wind that hit our apartment sounded like a car, or some other large, heavy object, slamming into our walls and windows. By the next morning, the winds had died down and we were left with some heavy rain, but schools were canceled anyway. We've had some pretty good snowstorms in Chicago, and still had to get the kids to school. Not much happened in Erlangen, except for a few trees blew over. According to a CNN article our friend Orest from Seattle sent us (by early Friday morning!), 25 people had lost their lives in the storm, two of them toddlers, and Great Britain suffered the most damage.

Thankfully, we were all home during this orkan. In October 2002, Philip and I were a train from Munich when an orkan hit. What should have been a two-hour train ride turned into eight hours because of trees that had fallen on the tracks around Nuernberg. Philip and I spent most the night in the Ansbach train station waiting for the tracks to clear. Luckily, we met a teenager on the train who spoke perfect English, and he translated the messages being broadcast over the intercom system. He also lent me his handy (cell phone) when mine died. Around midnight, our train arrived in Nuernberg, but could not proceed to Erlangen because they were still trying to clear the tracks. So, Bob came (Nuernberg is only a 20 minute drive from Erlangen) to pick us up. The storm in 2002 was not as bad as Kyrill on Thursday. Kyrill shut down the entire German train system.