Hey guys!

I am sure many of you heard that there was a shooting in Munich yesterday evening. I live a bit on the countryside, but my work is inside the city, where I was when it took place.

My work was pretty much in the center, while the OEZ (a mall) is in the northwest. My shift was from 11 am to 9 pm – at least it was supposed to.

At 7:30 pm we were dismissed and told to go home, appearantly (only) because of a storm warning – no one really believed that this was the only reason.

During my shift I had put my phone on silent, so that I wouldn't be tempted by any messages or anything, since we weren't supposed to use our cellphones. When the news finally reached us, we were allowed to call our families. By then my phone had blown up with messages of my family, bf and best friend, asking if I was alright and that I should call them.

After I had done that we left work and tried to find a way home, which was not easy, due to a complete lockdown of subways, streetcars (we call them Trambahn) and busses.

I went to a trainstation away from the city center, where I wanted to see if the trains were still running. When I was on the first set of stairs, I heard a woman scream „OUT OUT“ from downstairs and everyone – including me – turned around and ran back upstairs. A few minutes later a few people calmly went out of the trainstation, telling me that besides that the trains weren't running anymore nothing was going on.

Then I called my mother to find a solution so that I would be able to leave the city. Though Munich citizens started to „open their door“ for people who couldn't take any transport home, I managed to meet up with my dad a few kilometers away from the city center, where he picked me up with the car. On the way to there I saw a restaurant with outside seating places, which were badly trashed. Seats had fallen over, glass was smashed and it was completely deserted.

Without much delay after I arrived at the spot they picked me up and we left the city as fast as we could (without driving like maniacs). I was really relieved when we finally reached our house, where we settled in front of the TV to check for any news.

The next morning (today) the investigation from the police revealed that it was not, like first feared, a terroristic attack, but instead an „Amoklauf“ which can roughly be translated as „rampage“.

Of course this doesn't change anything for the injured or killed people or make it any less horrible.

Casualties turned out to be 9, most of them teenagers, the 10^th victim was the shooter himself.

The festival I was working at has been canceled completely. I am kinda glad, even though that sounds mean, but I doubt I would have been able to work today. Mostly due to me having to find a way out of Munich with the constant fear of not knowing what exactly was going on.

There had been also rumors of other places being „attacked“, but so far nothing has been proven. As far as I am concerned, those other „attacks“ were people being scared / the police nervous and neither knew what the exact situation was, so that any strange noise or ocurrences were taken as more things that were going on. Fortunately – if one can say that in such a situation – it was only one place and in view of the many bullets (something like 300) only 9 people were killed.

I know it sounds awful and I want to state that by no means I am valueing some lives over others – I simply want to state that it could have turned out WAY worse.

DevilsPetal