Augsburg Update

Well, here we are Christmas morning in the Austrian Tyrol (more about that later) and one of the first news items I read is about Augsburg, the town where we stayed on the 16th.  It was there that we saw the "living" advent calendar and met up with my friend, Andreas Kempf.  Anyway, this morning the centre of the town is being evacuated including all the residences around the Cathedral which was were our hotel was because a WWII bomb was discovered.  Here is the story that I found on MSNBC this morning.

Augsburg to evacuate 54,000 on Christmas morning as

World War Two bomb defused

In the largest such evacuation since the end of World War Two, 54,000 people in Augsburg are to move out of their homes on Christmas morning. Police do not know how long it will take to make the bomb safe.
Authorities have ordered residents in the southern German city within a 1.8 kilometer (1.1 mile) radius to evacuate their homes on Christmas morning. A team has to disarm a massive 1.8-ton World War Two era aerial bomb.  The impacted area covers much of Augsburg's central historic district, including the city hall and cathedral. On Saturday, patients at a hospital clinic were transferred to another hospital or allowed to temporarily go home.  Around 4,000 police, firefighters and emergency service personnel will be on hand to support the operation, which will impact 32,000 households. People without another place to go will be offered shelter in schools.  Seven decades on since World War Two, finding unexploded bombs dropped by Allied forces on Nazi Germany is common.  Sunday's evacuation will be the largest since 45,000 people were obliged to leave their homes when a bomb was removed from Koblenz in 2011.  Large parts of Augsburg were destroyed in February 1944, when the city was attacked by hundreds of British and US bombers. A major raid had been organized against the city in April 1942.

Gosh, I feel for the people of Augsburg who, no doubt, have had all their special Christmas plans totally disrupted.  Weren't we lucky - yet again!