Although Total Solar Eclipses are occurring twice a year, it can take ages before a Total Solar Eclipse can be seen at a certain place. In The Netherlands, for example, the last Total Solar Eclipse took place at May 3., 1715 while the next one will take place at October 7., 2135. So when a Total Solar Eclipse will take place only a few hundred kilometers from home, it didn't take us long to decide to travel to the zone of totality!

The Total Solar Eclipse of August 11., 1999 would be seen in a broad band over Europe, starting in the southernmost tip of England and ending in Rumania and Bulgaria at the shores of the Black Sea. In The Netherlands, the coverage would "only" be 93.7 %. As a friend of ours is living in Munich, Germany, situated well inside the zone of totality, we decided to go there. We left The Netherlands on August 6. and traveled via Prague, were we stayed a couple of days, to Munich.

Pepijn, Annemarie and Willian looking at the sky. To shield our eyes from the dangerously bright sunlight, we all wear protective glasses.

On the morning of August 11th, the sky was covered with lots of clouds with blue patches of clear sky in between. With some luck we would be able to see the eclipse but things could go wrong as well. We decided to go to Olympiapark, the location of the 1972 Olympic Games, an idea that we shared with some 20 thousand others.

A last view of the sun, only minutes before Totality.
Just minutes after Totality, the sun shows itself again.

In the beginning, everything went well. Between clouds we could catch enough glimpses of the disappearing sun to remain hopeful of a visible totality. However, with the eclipse proceeding and Totality nearing, more and more clouds started to appear culminating in a downpour that lasted from about five minutes before Totality to about five minutes afterwards. So we missed Totality and with it a possible view of Baileys Beads, Diamond Ring and Corona. Totality accompanying phenomena, as a drop in temperature and a sudden darkness, could easily be observed.

A sudden downpour spoils the moment of Totality.

Although the ambiance was great, 20 thousand people whistling and clapping at the moment of Totality, and making pictures of, well, nothing, we didn't see what we hoped for. At that very moment, we decided that the Total Solar Eclipse of June 21., 2001 would give us the perfect excuse to return to Africa while, as June is well within the dry season, at the same time optimizing our chance of really seeing one. First, however we had to return home with hundreds of thousands of people having the same idea causing enormous traffic jams on the roads. We were lucky with only 100 km of traffic jams and arrived at home safely at 3 AM.

The different stadia of the June 21., 2001 eclipse photographed at 10 min intervals.