WordPress Daily Prompt: Musical Marker

We all have songs that remind us of specific periods and events in our lives. Twenty years from now, which song will remind you of the summer of 2014?

Thankyou Mr. WordPress Daily Prompt man for subjecting me to watch approximately twenty videos of songs belonging to my other fellow bloggers when I toured other contributuions. They were not particularly my taste in music and have no connection for me to Summer 2014. Today I am being a 100% misery guts, but I have absolutely no music to annoy people with for Summer 2014. I do not even bother to turn the radio on, I let others do that and just let it flow. Mr. Swiss likes to listen to his sort of jazz, but mostly with earphones.

I was subjected to about ten National Anthems of various countries participating in the Football World Cup in Brasil as Mr. Swiss was a regular viewer. Eventually I knew them all and was singing the Brasilian national song along with the others, even if I did not know the words. I did know the words of the German Anthem, and as they won, it was often played. They even played the Swiss national song now and again, but as we went home quite early, it did not exactly become top of the international hit parade. Of course our Swiss national TV programme brought their idea of match entertainment during the games and every evening we were confronted with Brasil as it sings and dances with a mixture of Bossa Nova rhythms. I don’t mind it, but was not sorry to see it go.

I could perhaps play the Tour de France song: even they have an anthem. It is THE national French bicycle race although this year they began in England, returned to France and made a couple of detours into Belgium and Spain, so it got very international. Mr. Swiss is a keen fan of the race and as a freeloader I am also following those lovely sun burnt legs of the cyclists, but only at a distance. The winter of the day is either given some sort of trophy for the fastest  mountain ascent and descent or he gets some sort of special t-shirt for peddling over the winning line. They have a super leader who is allowed to wear the yellow t-shirt for being the overall leader, something like WordPress blogger of the year t-shirt, the one I still have not yet received (size XXL in case someone in making notes on my blogs). I just wanted to say that they play the Tour de France national song after all these winners accept their prizes, but it does not seem to have any words like “Up with the yellow t-shirt” or “the nicest legs in the race”.

If you are missing my usual prize suspicious photo, do not worry. I have a video, yes, but no music. I live at the foot of the Jura mountains, a friendly area where the hedgehogs and rabbits say goodnight to each other. The weather usually behaves as we are situated on a high level above the local river. We have a few rivers in the area, one being the Emme which flows through the Emmental (where the cheese with more holes than cheese originates) and it eventually flowes into our local river Aare. Today they gave out a storm warning. We had a monsoon season last week and it is still raining in some places. The Emme is now full to overflowing. Housewives at home were being called on the phone by their husbands who were working. “Leave the house at once, a flood is coming” and it did. Most of the houses were taken by surprise. One man had to find refuge in the top floor of the house within an hour. Apparently it is the highest water level in the Emme since 350 years. It is not yet that bad where I live, but the near village of Biberist has been warned and the firemen and rescue teams are ready to take action.

This is the only film I found on YouTube, all the others are on local news stations in Facebook. It was taken four hours ago.

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It's raining again

I just could not resist using this song by Supertramp as the theme for my blog. Yes, it started raining some time on Tuesday and stopped during Wednesday night. The problem was it didn't just rain - it poured down. Even my cats did not venture further than a meter from our home and stayed on the porch in the dry areas. Things would not have been so bad if.... well it happened like this.

Part I
I was at work and phoned hubby in the morning to ask what to buy for the evening meal - a usual conversation. We of course spoke about the weather, especially as a couple of weeks ago we had a lot of rain and two of our neighbour's cellars had collected a few centimeters of water. During my telephone conversation hubby said someone is at the door and I should wait a few minutes. I heard him speaking in the distance on the phone and he came back to say the neighbour had just called to say water was slowly seeping into the cellars again. Hubby was not disturbed as the last time it did not get to our cellar, but said he would have a look.

Part II
About 4.00 in the afternoon hubby called me back at work with the development of the situation. He had just spent the last hour with two other retired neighbours (they were the only ones around) scooping up the water masses in the cellar with snow shovels and driving the water into the garage where there was at least a drain for it to pour away. During the day all the cellars and the corridor to the cellars had reached a level of 3 centimeters of water. So where was the water coming from. Not only do we have cellars and a car park on this first level underground, but there are 4 hobby rooms as well for people that like to have an extra room for their pasttimes. One of these rooms has a nice big window which looks out onto a wall of fancy stones - a sort of rockery with plants in between - quite pretty really. What happened was that the rain came down in torrents and the water got trapped between the rockery and the window. Hubby said it looked like some sort of giant aquarium, just the fish were missing really. Anyhow the water built up so much that it forced its way through the edge of the window and it started pouring in. Something like the waterfalls in Schaffhausen but on a smaller scale. The water then developed into a small river flooding out the hobby room and creeping under the door into the corridor and other cellars.

Part III
The neighbour whose hobby room was flooding was luckily at home and had a pump. He then fitted up the pump and the pump started pumping the water direct from outside the window into a sink in his hobby room. The aquarium gradually disappeared and the water stopped flooding into the cellar, so for the meanwhile the flooding was reduced. There must have been hundreds of liters of water coming in - see photo of sink with water being pumped into it.

Eventually I arrived home from work and as I had to cross through the cellar corridor from the garage to get to the stairway, I decided to have a look at the damage. The floors were damp, but gradually drying out. I peeked in our cellar and saw that everything had been moved to the back as it was the front two thirds of the cellar that were under water. Other people were not so fortunate, although there is a large heating room in the cellar where damp items could be stored in the meanwhile. Hubby came downstairs to meet me in the cellar, two other neighbours were already there and another two ladies came down to join us. It was quite a party, but no-one really felt like celebrating. In the meanwhile water started pouring out of the hobby room again. By this time we were joined in the cellar by two other neighbours who had just come home from work. Hubby had a look and noticed that the hose (see picture) was no longer pumping water into the sink but had made itself independent and was pumping water onto the ground. With some wire the hose was fixed into the sink and all was well again, well almost.

Part IV
So we all started wondering why this has happened the second time. Nearby two new blocks of appartments had been built - luxury class complete with cellars, garage and nice gardens and concrete paths. They had been putting the finishing touches to the road leading to the outside parking spaces. Unfortunately when building this small road, they forgot to allow for the rain to run away. Well, actually the rain did run away, down the nice stones to the window of the hobby room in our cellars. There were many discussions and meetings of building chiefs and managers of the bulding society of our flats, with the result that the road has to been pulled up and relaid with a nice draining system on one side, the water being directed into a container leading to a draining system. All's well that ends well, well almost. At the moment when you walk through our cellar corridor you can here the gentle summing of about 10 dehydrating machines.

It has now stopped raining and the sun even came out today. The weather forecast predicted no rain at the week-end, so we all have time to clean out our cellars and throw the stuff away that got ruined by the water.

It's Raning Again

Photo of the Schoolhouse in Olten, Kanton Solothurn, Switzerland

Yesterday lunch time it started raining, but it has only rained once since then and it is still raining. Switzerland is gradually sinking. It’s a small country, so it doesn’t need much. If you think you are safe in the mountains because they are higher, then this is a mistake. More and more holiday chalets are being built in the tourist areas, but the mountains are not really there to live on, but more to visit. The result is when it really starts pouring down the earth starts moving and a landslide develops. There have been many houses buried by the avalanche of earth that covers them.

The area where I live is near a river but we are fairly high up and the River Aare floods very rarely in our region, although a few people where I live have water in their cellars at the moment. Nothing dramatic, but not exactly to be wished for. The towns of Olten and Aarau are quite badly hit and certain areas have been evacuated. The holiday villages of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen are cut off from civilisation due to landslides which have blocked the roads.

Seeing all this flooding I was reminded of two years ago when Kandersteg and the area around the Lake of Brienz was badly hit. At that time my son was doing his annual military service. All fit sons of the Swiss are in the Swiss army and have to do 3 weeks a year. They are fully equipped with uniform, rifle and boots made for walking (at least 25 Km marches are made with the recruits – the officers have to do a 50 Km march). Anyhow, my son was doing his service in a place called Bière in the French speaking part of Switzerland high up in the Jura highlands as artillerist where they have the big tanks, although he is in charge of the office logistic and accounts. As every good soldier is, he went to the barracks to sleep about 11.30 in the evening as the men were relaxing in the local restaurant and quenching their thirst until then. It had been raining for some time, although up in the Jura they didn’t notice any dangers.

He had been sleeping for approximately an hour when the commanding officer came in and woke him and a few hundred others. They had to get their equipment packed within 30 minutes and all their belongings and were put onto lorries and driven down to Kandersteg where there was severe flooding. My son had to make the journey in a car with one of the officers as he had to get there before the rest to organise the army logistic. He said that part wasn’t fun as the officer with him had also only had about an hour’s sleep, but they arrived ok at about 3-4 in the morning. He then had to do the paperwork and organisation of the office. You can’t just move 300 soldiers to a mountain village in the middle of the night without having some organisation. At around 7.00 in the morning the officer asked him how much sleep he had had, and after my son told him about one hour, he had to command to go to bed, which he wasn’t sorry about.

During the 2 weeks they were in Kandersteg they helped to clear the debris that the water had left behind and generally tidy up. My son had never seen anything like it and it made a lasting impression on him. He said they were knee deep in mud most of the time and how tragic it was to see people that had lost their homes and possessions. If you opened the door to a house left standing from the water, you were confronted with mud and wood piled up to the roof. One thing he told us that we never forgot was the generosity of the people living there. If the soldiers went to a café for something to drink they were never presented with a bill. The village inhabitants were so grateful for the hard work the soldiers were doing that it was the only way they could thank them. My son said afterwards that it was the first time he had done his military service and felt that there was a reason for doing it.

It is still raining, but the news says it will soon stop. The situation is now improving in some places, although that really means it isn’t getting worse. A lot of people won’t be sleeping in their homes tonight if they still have a home. I know a lot of countries have had bad floods lately, thinking of England, the weather has been a bit crazy this year.