Time goes by.....

It's been six days since last I posted some pictures on this Blog. I suppose the quickest way to loose the few viewers I have is not to post anything for a long time. However, I was so busy working on my Africa Safari shows, that I simply had no time to do much of  anything else. 

So I could not tell you about the horrendous floods Europe is suffering from. In certain areas whole towns had to be evacuated, and many buildings were destroyed by the rushing water. The fire fighters, the armies and thousands upon thousands of voluteers worked day and night, trying to stem the flood with uncountable numbers of sand bags and other contraptions in an effort to keep the water from reaching homes, businesses and factories.

The town in which I grew up, Braunau am Inn, fortunately lies very high and was not inundated. 
Bleiburg, where I now live also is on high ground and was therefore saved from this disaster.
It was, however, almost impossible to go from one place to another, because all low lying streets were completely washed out.

Why were the floods so particularly devastating this time around?
It rained and it rained and it rained some more and just when you thought it had stopped and you could see the occasional blue strip between lowlying clouds, the strip disappeared and it started to rain again...
I think that the biblical rain of 40 days and 40 nights was kid stuff compared to us here.
I almost started to build an Arch. Had my name been Noah, I would have done so.
(does anybody remember Bill Cosby's conversation between God and Noah ??)

Let me tell you something else: My years old hearing aids no longer worked, so I didn't bother to wear them any longer. It was very frustrating. Christin, or anybody else for that matter who wanted to tell me something, had to put up with repeated requests to "say it again".. or " what was that?"... 
To go to a play was totally useless, since I could not understand the spoken word any longer.
Careful examination of my ears revealed that I had "moderate to severe" hearing loss, depending on the frequency and that I could no longer hear or could not differenciate between the letters: P, G, K, T,
and additionally, in a certain range between F,S and H.
Well, that takes care of a lot of letters, making it impossible to understand words and then whole sentences get lost.
I absolutely had to listen to TV with earphones or, although I could hear the actors speak, I understood absolutely nothing. That, of course, reduces watching TV  without ear phones to Soccer and  Snooker....

Enough of this..... Today I received my new In-Ear Hearing Aid- and it is as if a miracle had happened.
I CAN HEAR AGAIN:............... I almost cried....

But crying is something we do not do here, at
Bertstravels.