10 years ago I lost a good part of my faith in humanity.
We were on a short holiday with our best friends in Germany (Sauerland). We had been out all day and hadn't heard any news. We came back to the park where we had rented a cottage in the afternoon. The girls went straight back to the cottage and my friend and I decided to get a drink at the "sports bar" there. Usually there was pretty loud music playing but not now. Although we noticed, we didn't think anything about it. There were several TV's installed behind the bar that were always showing sports programs. They were so, that we could see 1 from where we sat but not the others (one aimed to every corner of the bar). There was still just some sports program on the TV we could see.
After some time I started overhearing some German newsreader and picking up some lines about New York air planes and the WTC. This triggered my curiosity of course. We had been to NYC in 1998. We knew two people who lived and worked in NYC via the Level 42 (the band) fan forums and visited them then. So I walked over to have a look at the TV screen "around the corner".......just like everyone I couldn't believe my eyes.....I asked to the German woman at the bar what was going on and she told everything.
I was devastated...we immediately returned to the cottage and the girls had already seen the news on TV.
This may sound exaggerated now but I could barely sleep that night. I could not believe that human beings were capable of something like that.
One of the people we knew worked at the WTC so we feared the worst. Although not a close friend, you still think about it immediately.
Only a couple days later we arrived home and found an e-mail from her that she was fine.
She had gone through the attacks in the late 90's, when they tried it with the explosives in a van. Following that, they were more or less well prepared for any future things to happen. The moment they saw smoke and papers flying through the air (she was in the 2nd tower) they started to evacuate.
She worked on about 3/4 of the tower. First they could still use elevators to go down. Then when she was about at 1/3 height the 2nd plane hit. She feared that the tower would actually tumble over from the impact. From there they had to use the stairs. While they were going down, firemen etc. were going up....
She could get one of the last subway trains out of there and so was safe.
She lost 6 colleagues of the 3000 (!) working there in that company, a huge financial company.
After three days I e-mailed her how she was. She was actually already working again, much to my amazement. The company had a completely worked out plan ever since the first attempt in the 90's to continue business when calamities would happen. (Of course very much needed for a financial company).
I don't know about you guys, but the world definitly changed for me that day. May sound weird for someone so remote from that spot but even so... My wife was pregnant from our son Mark and I had to keep thinking how this would impact the world and his future....
From that day I also knew I would once return to NYC. It took about 10 years. I was there again this summer and we visited the temporary visitors center at ground zero.
My son was with me and I had to show him how evil some people can be....and I cried.
