As an American I hear the word 'bomb' and I think about terrorists, homemade explosives, and crazy people blowing stuff up. The bomb found in my neighborhood was nothing like that. It was an American bomb. It had been lying dormant under a school since World War II.
Throughout Germany, they dig up dud Allied bombs every so often. Hannover is no exception. I wrote about this back in 2013 when a bomb was diffused in the Steintor area, forcing 9,000 people to evacuate. On Tuedsay night, 31,000 of us were the displaced people of Hannover. There's always a chance that the bomb will blow up.
Before I go on, here's a very quick recap of WWII bombings here:
There were a lot of them. About a million bombs of various types were dropped on Hannover during the war.
About the bombings:
The city was 90% destroyed during the war and most of what you see today was built or restored later on. The Allies were after Hannover's factories, industrial areas and railways, but residential areas were hit too.
So it's no surprise that a few bombs did not explode and got lost in the rubble. This one - all 550 pounds of it - was unearthed in the construction as an old school building was demolished.
About the evacuation:
At around 4pm the city published a list of streets that had to be evacuated. Everyone was supposed to be out by 8pm and we didn't know when we could return. There was also a very slight chance our house could be blown to bits by the time we got back.
What do you pack in this situation? It's like that hypothetical question of what do you take if your house is burning down. Family photos? Money? Jewelry? Brian and I just took our toothbrushes and passports. If this all went bad we needed to be able to get out of Germany with clean teeth.
About not wanting to be evacuated:
We headed to a friend's house around 6 with serious second thoughts. What if we just stayed? What would happen to us, really? Germans are all about safety and security and control. Maybe we were getting sucked in. Maybe by heading out of the house as ordered meant that we were being controlled. We were just following orders. We did not question authority.
Had Brian and I become Germanized? What was next - never crossing the street on a red light? Wearing a scarf in July? Drinking only fizzy water?
Americans don't evacuate. Americans stand their ground and defend their homes in tornadoes and hurricanes and alien attacks. We don't let anyone push us around and we hold our firearms high! Until they send heat seeking helicopters after us.
Back to the evacuation:
How do you get 31,000 people to get out of their homes? You call, you bang on doors, you block of streets, you stop the trams and buses, and you drive down the street with flashing lights and sirens and a loudspeaker.
Cultural side note: You would think that's forewarning enough, and that anyone who stays does it at their own risk. At least I would think that, but I am not German. When they say mandatory evacuation, they mean mandatory.
So when people don't respond to the calls and the loudspeakers, you send in a helicopter with a thermal-imaging camera. It shows where people are hiding out so that police can come and kick their doors in.
About being a displaced person:
It was fun to joke that Brian and I were refugees from the south side of town. We headed off on our bikes with passports and toothbrushes, not sure what the future would hold. Of course we weren't actually refugees. We went out for dinner and drank red wine and had a nice little sleepover with friends. We didn't even sleep in a tent. But it's not fun to leave your house on short notice because you have to. And when we returned in the morning, everything was back to normal. That's probably the most excitement this town will have for months.
But it made me wonder - what am I doing now just because the authorities tell me to? Are we letting the Germans push us around? Sure, the streets are clean and trains run on time, but that doesn't mean I have to do what I am told. The people who dropped that bomb weren't getting pushed around by anybody.
Today I deliberately crossed the street against the light, just to assert how foreign I am. I pronounced some German words incorrectly, on purpose. And I am currently chugging a large glass of tap water, while this song keeps running through my head:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiLrJBHiSzM
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