80th birthday bash

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Rain Rain Go Away! More on that in a minute but first a few details about Johannes 80th birthday party, our main reason for this trip.

The party was held at a Gasthaus about 20 minutes from here. Martina is a "hostess with the mostess" by nature so the dining room was beautifully decorated and well stocked with an amazing variety of food and drink. This was the first time we've seen Johannes and Martina since their time in Florida. I recognized several of their friends and family from other events but several others recognized me from the hours of video and photo footage they've been coerced into watching from the 2 month Florida adventure. All very nice people and my German is getting a little better so am comfortable with greetings and small talk. Additionally, many of them try their hand at English with me and I am grateful for that. Even met a lady who knew sign language so tried out the old sign language alphabet and discovered that it is the same across languages so that was interesting! Dinner was a buffet with every imaginable German dish which I felt obliged to try all of them, except the tongue of course. I believe Ralf didn't think I would recognize what it was but yes indeed I did and none of it touched my plate, much less my palate! My favorite was the potato croquettes, seasoned mashed potatoes with a crunchy coating, friend to perfection. What's not to love?! But honestly everything was delicious as evidenced by the multiple trips to the buffet throughout the course of the evening. Fortunately, there was much dancing all night, in fact until 2:00am when the DJ packed up and then the post birthday party celebration moved to our studio upstairs, much to my displeasure. Somehow, though, after I retreated to the single loft bed upstairs, I was able to sleep through the rousing conversation of the last 8 party guests. I did have the pleasure of dancing with almost all of Johannes and Martina's friends, learned a few new dance moves that weren't on my list before (some crazy variations of the polka, or at least I believe that is what was intended to be) and stepped on a few toes of their gracious German friends for an overall very enjoyable evening.

Throughout the party Ralf was carefully monitoring the river levels in Chemnitz. While it was steadily rising due to the pretty much nonstop rain for a week straight, it still seemed to be under control and the water that had seeped into the basement level had all been pumped out. His main person who is responsible for building maintenance, coincidentally, is in Stockholm Sweden, to run a marathon so Ralf has identified himself as the main contact for emergency personnel and building tenants. The first call came at about 4:30am that the water was rushing over the riverbank and directly into the building. Then calls every two hours with updates of rising waters until Ralf finally left his daughter Ines and I at the Inn to try and get some sleep and off to work for him. Later this morning, after we enjoyed some breakfast with the remaining party guests, we joined him to see (as he called it) "The Chaos". I got a first hand glimpse of the devastation that a natural disaster can cause in such a short time. He is keeping good spirits for the most part but needless to say, is under an enormous stress. I convinced him to come back to the bungalow with me this afternoon for a nap and a pizza. Now he is back on the job, monitoring the ongoing damage as the water levels continue to rise in the complex. The emergency generator finally shut down a few hours ago as the water overcame it. Rain is forecasted through tomorrow morning but they report that it will take at least five days for the water levels to decline. So, in the meantime, we stay close to here and hope that the emergency status that was declared this afternoon provides some sort of monetary relief in what will be extensive clean up and repair effort. I can offer assurance, however, that we are completely safe at the bungalow as it is located in a high area quite a distance from the river. So for now, it's Auf Weidersehen and more later from a very cool, very rainy Chemnitz Germany.

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Photos

Ralf, Ines and I
Isn't their resemblance amazing?

Flooding
This is a view of what used to be the street in front of the complex and the river behind that and the restaurant across the river, now just one big rushing river.