*At A Loss For Words*

I had noticed that no-one had mentioned this news story out of Cologne in my research-oriented online communities: It was brought up on my fahnlein's BBS by one of our German speakers....

More detail, including some lovely government corruption, here.

The loss of life is a terrible tragedy. The loss of hundreds of years of German cultural heritage, much of it salvaged from the rubble of WWII, is horrific. 18 kilometers of archival documents, going back to 922 and covering everything from original town council documents dating from 1376 to the original socialist press newspapers published by Karl Marx.

*tears*