Summer hail

It was a beautiful day that we spent in München, one of the places we visited during our language course in Stuttgart. We went to a beer restaurant where we had typical German food. We also had a city tour on one of those fancy buses where you can sit on the roof. Then we headed for the “Deutsches Museum”, a very interesting technical museum. The two hours of free time we dedicated - of course, no question - to shopping. However, what was really interesting for me was the trip back home to Stuttgart. We went on the bus and everything was normal. We were not feeling tired so we kept talking with each other (and of course the supervisor was furious because we kept moving around the bus). And after nearly half an hour, it started raining. This was okay, we had already gotten used to it since this August was uncommonly rainy. But then it started snowing and it made something like a popping noise because the bus had very large glass windows. Unfortunately, the snowing became stronger and the snow balls or, to call them by their name, the hailstones were nearly the size of table tennis balls. And of course you can imagine that the sound of the hailstones hitting the glass of the bus became like gunfire. We were not afraid at first, but when we asked one of the supervisors who had been living in Germany for 3 years whether they could break the glass of the bus, he answered “Yes”. So this got us a little bit worried but then we said together the Traveling Prayer. After 5 or 6 minutes the hail stopped completely and thank God we arrived home safely.

Reham Atteya (Stuttgart)