Solar Eclipse Day

I am lucky enough to have witnessed a total solar eclipse. Not today in the USA but in Europe 18 years ago, Wednesday August 11th 1999. But I thought I would recount my experience of that.
We were in Munich with friends to see the total solar eclipse. We tuned into Sky News and watched the eclipse over Cornwall, and the UK commentators trying to make the best of the cloud and rain. Like many people in the UK, we saw the shots of the eclipse from the aircraft that every TV network seemed to have chartered to get above the clouds.
But the eclipse was coming our way, so we went into the garden where it was now warmer and dry, with blue patches in the sky. Fingers crossed! We had the foil viewers and sat on the veranda with the TV in the lounge behind us and hoping for a clear bit of sky. It got cooler and dimmer. A strange light, unlike twilight, but best described as diluted light. Cooler and darker, the partially obscured sun taunting us among the clouds. It got to the point where there was just a sliver of sun left. It was in a clear patch, and I was looking through the viewer. I turned to check the TV, now on the local station, and saw the same image, which suddenly disappeared. I turned round and looked up, forgetting the viewer - and there was a black hole in the sky, surrounded by the corona of bright light, easily seen with the naked eye. 'Karen' was trying to find the sun with a viewer, but I told her just to look. It was an eerie and awesome sight, no picture or TV image of which can properly duplicate. We could see "Bailey's beads", where tiny fragments of the sun shine through valleys on the rim of the moon. How incredible that the sizes of these two objects viewed from Earth match so exactly! Astonished and subdued we watched, oblivious of the camera lying ready for just this. The sky was a deep blue, not dark, and three or four stars were visible. Glancing down into the garden, I saw that there was darkness, I couldn't see the other side in shadow. It was quiet, cold and still. Blue sky, stars and clouds, but dark at ground level. Dark shapes of trees framing the deep blue sky with darkness below and around us. Distant yelps of delight from others in their gardens. The TV screen was showing totality from an aircraft above Munich. After perhaps 30 seconds, a cloud came across the face of the eclipsed sun, and we didn't see totality again, and so missed the "diamond ring" of the sun's re-appearance. But we had seen totality, which is more than many people have had the fortune to do.
We celebrated with white German sausage, a sweet mustard and beer with bretzel bread