“The dogs suddenly started barking, I immediately saw why”, says Jouke de Vries about a predicament on Saturday in the German village of Alstätte, about four kilometers from the border with the Netherlands. De Vries saw from his garden how a balloonist piloted his enormous craft just over the house of his neighbors.
“The dogs had heard the burners long ago and started barking. When I looked, the balloon was hanging over the neighbor’s roof. The balloonist tried his best to get it back up, but couldn’t. He gasped as much as he could, but he really couldn’t get the balloon back up.” It was almost inevitable that the balloon would crash. “But he still managed to get it over the house”, says Marjon, Jouke’s wife. “I mainly thought: how big is that”
Together they watched as the balloon – with a huge image of a dog on it – almost crashed into the house, dragged on the ground for a moment and came to a stop in a nearby meadow. Immediately neighbors rushed over, holding the basket and helping the balloonist and his passengers. They then towed the colossus to the road where a car from the balloon company had arrived in the meantime.
Relaxed
In the street there is amazement at the coolness of the balloonist and his four passengers. “He was very relaxed. No, it was planned that way, he said, that he ended up in the meadow and missed the house by a hair. The passengers were also relaxed.”
But it was clear that it could not have been the intention to land there. De Vries does not know where it went wrong. Was it something with the loss of thermals? “I have no idea, the fact is that he really couldn’t get it up again.” It is not clear where the hot air balloon took off. According to our AD.nl colleagues, he was on his way to the Netherlands.
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