On August 12, 2026, about an hour before sunset, Germany experienced a partial solar eclipse, while Northern Spain and Iceland experienced a total solar eclipse.
In my part of Germany, the coverage was about 84 percent, i.e. as solar eclipses go, this one is pretty impressive. Almost as impressive as the 1999 solar eclipse (total in southern Germany, but only partial in northern Germany) would have been, had I actually been able to see it. Alas, I wasn’t able to see it, for while that day started off clear, dense clouds decided to gather just at the crucial moment, so all I saw was the sky getting darker than usual in the middle of the day, as if a really nasty storm was rolling in. I even wrote a poem about it at the time and sold it to a long defunct magazine of speculative poetry.
Unlike the massive excitement accompanying the 1999 solar eclipse, the response to this one was initially muted. There was very little in the way of media coverage ahead of time and when someone started talking about a solar eclipse on the radio some time ago, I initially thought they were talking about the 2028 total solar eclipse in Australia, which we’d been using as a selling point for the Brisbane Worldcon bid. But then I realised that they were talking about a solar eclipse happening here in Germany in a few weeks time and I thought, “We’re having a solar eclipse this year? Why didn’t anybody tell me?”
The lack of excitement and media hype also meant that solar eclipse glasses, so common in 1999, were surprisingly hard to come by. Very few shops sold them and those that did sold out quickly. Some people tried ordering solar eclipse glasses online, but they didn’t always ship in time. And then there were the lucky ones who still had their solar eclipse glasses from 1999. Indeed, Pilar Marie Stein asks in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung why solar eclipse glasses were so difficult to come by in Germany, even though we have known for decades that there would be a solar eclipsed on August 12, 2026. She doesn’t really have an answer either beyond the fact that the respective vendors did not buy enough solar eclipse glasses. I guess the vendors understimated the degree of interest in the solar eclipse, since it was not a total one in Germany.
As for myself. I didn’t much worry about solar eclipse glasses, because I was planning to view the 2026 solar eclipse like I had viewed two partial eclipses in the 1990s and early 2000s and had planned to view the 1999 eclipse, namely through my Dad’s welding mask. Cause a welding mask or welding goggles do much the same thing as solar eclipse glasses do.
The Case of the Missing Welding Mask
As August 12 rolled around, I decided to get the welding mask out of basement, so I would have it at hand for the eclipse in the evening. Alas, I got an unpleasant surprise, because while the welding machine was where it had always been, in a specific cupboard in my Dad’s basement workshop, the welding mask was gone.
“Okay, maybe Dad put it somewhere else”, I thought. So I checked the garage, but no welding mask. I even checked the annex, which was supposed to become an indoor pool one day, but never grew beyond a pit filled with random building materials. There were vague plans to turn that annex into a proper storage space or a small apartment, indoor pools being too expensive to operate these days, but those plans never came to anything. I may do something with that space someday, but that would cost a lot of money, so for now I leave it as it is, as Dad’s weird mess. I hardly ever go in there anyway, because I usually have no reason to.
I did not find the welding mask in the annex. However, I found Mjolnir:
When you find Mjolnir in your Dad’s messy annex, next to a fire extinguisher, a set of random prongs, an orange nylon thing I think might some kind of sun shelter and random steel constructions.
Okay, so it’s not really Mjolnir, just a very big hammer, but it was still funny to stumble upon that thing, especially since I had no memory of ever seeing it before. And yes, I can lift it. I tried.
It’s not the only weird thing I stumbled upon in Dad’s mess either. In the past I found a sauna oven from the 1970s, still in original packaging (there was supposed to be a sauna adjacent to the indoor pool), old radios, ammunition for my Dad’s old air gun (I’m still wondering, if the air gun ever resurfaces), old bicycles I thought had been thrown out long ago, my old bicycle basket, a toilet bowl (there was supposed to be a toilet next to the indoor pool), a lifetime supply of XPS foam insulation plates (hurray, free crafting material!) and two beautiful gothicky stained glass windows that I really want to do something with one day.
In addition to Mjolnir, I also came across a kind of wall hanging/wind chime made of wooden beads. It must be almost fifty years old and I think we had it in our home or possibly on the balcony, when we lived in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1978. I had no idea that thing still existed and was surprised to find it randomly hanging on a wall over the entrance to the duct with the service lines for the pool.
What I did not find, however, was the welding mask. I suspect it may be in Dad’s mess somewhere, but then the Ark of the Covenant is probably in there somewhere as well. Or maybe Dad took it to work. He was at a building site just a day before he went to the hospital, so maybe he just left it there or at the office of the company he freelanced for. Or maybe he lent it to someone who didn’t give it back.
I obviously couldn’t ask Dad. For starters, I don’t have a ouija board and even if I did, considering how much my parents hated everything even remotely occult due to falling for some stupid Satanic Panic shit, they wouldn’t reply anyway out of spite. Talking of which, I recently realised that I no longer have to hide what occult stuff – runes stones, a pendulum, tarot cards, etc… – I have, because my parents are gone. I can also actually buy myself a ouija board, if I want one, and no one would bat an eyelash.
I tried calling my neighbour Vladimir, cause he helps me around the garden and also helped to partly clear out the annex (the ten meter long wooden beams in the “pool” are now his garden shed), so he might know where the welding mask is. Alas, I couldn’t reach him. And of course, it was way too late to buy solar eclipse glasses, cause they were sold out everywhere. I briefly considered going to a DIY store and buying a welding mask. However, I have no idea how expensive welding masks are and I only need it for the eclipse – I don’t actually know how to weld. In the end, I decided to head out anyway and hope a friendly person would let me take a peek through their solar eclipse glasses.
For I couldn’t have watched the eclipse from my own home anyway. The eclipse was set to reach its maximum coverage at 20:08. Sunset is just before nine PM, so the sun would already be hanging very low in the western sky. So low that my view would be blocked by trees and houses. So I had to go somewhere else to watch it.
The “Mountains” of the North German Lowlands
Heading to Wulfhooper Straße was my initial plan. It’s a quiet country road and passes through lots of fields. Except for the occasional farmhouse, the view is usually clear all the way to the horizon. Plus, you can park by the roadside without impeding traffic. And if I had the welding mask or solar eclipse glasses, that’s probably where I would have gone.
However, since I didn’t have any protective equipment, I needed to go where there would be other people watching. And so I decided to head to Hoher Berg (high mountain) in the village of Gessel-Leerßen near the town of Syke. The name “Hoher Berg” is a bit of a joke, since it’s a whopping 58.5 meters above sea level. However, it is the highest natural elevation in the area and offers a really nice view across the Weser glacial valley. On a clear day, you can see all the way to Bremen some twenty-five kilometers away.
For more about the Hoher Berg and its history as a US army radar and missile station, see this post from 2012 and this one from 2015. You can also visit the official website or read this article by Jan-Paul Koopmann from the leftwing newspaper taz, who not only relocates the Hoher Berg to Bremen but also complains that there isn’t enough documentation or memorial plaques that there were once nuclear missiles stationed there. I hate to disappoint Mr. Koopmann, but the fact that there were nuclear missiles stationed on Hoher Berg isn’t exactly a secret. Locals have known or at least suspected (cause we didn’t know for sure just what US army was doing on Hoher Berg until after the base closed in 1989) for a long time. The distinctive radar domes were visible from afar, everybody knew them and we also knew that this installation on Hoher Berg would make us a target. But then, Bremen was also a target and nobody expected to survive a nuclear war anyway. That said, the fact that the burned out first stage of the Nike-Hercules missiles once stationed there would might well have wiped the villages of Ristedt and Gessel-Leerßen off the map was new to me. However, if those missiles had ever been used, the Hoher Berg and the surrounding villages would be a nuclear crater some four minutes later anyway.
As for higher elevations in my very flat part of the North German lowlands, so there is also Bassumer Utkiek (Bassum Look-out), a former garbage deposit site turned nature preserve and adventure playground that reaches up to a whopping 88.7 meters above sea level. However, Bassumer Utkiek is further away and the view is less clear, because there are a still active garbage deposit site as well as trees in the way.
North of Bremen, you also have the Weyerberg in Worpswede, another relic of the last ice age, which lies 54.4 meters above sea level. However, Weyerberg is not only an hour’s drive away, the view would probably also be impeded by trees. It does have a really cool expressionist WWI memorial on top of the “mountain”, though that’s currently undergoing renovations and not visible.
I should also mention the highest elevation in the city and state of Bremen, namely Metalhenge, an art installation on top of another former garbage deposit site. This one is 51 meters above sea level. Yes, I live in an extremely flat area. Metalhenge is cool, but it would also have taken me about an hour, maybe more depending on the traffic, to get there. And since Metalhenge is partly marketed as a place for astronomicaly observations, it also was overcrowded with eclipse watchers to the point that parking cars blocked the roads leading to garbage deposit site. Some people even tried to park on the adjacent Autobahn A27 or tried to reverse their cars on the Autobahn, which is just idiotic.
The Mystery of the Lost Cyclists
Of all these natural and unnatural elevations in my region, Hoher Berg is the closest, only about ten kilometers away. It’s also popular with the local astronomy community, because there is comparatively little light pollution here. So of course, there would be people on Hoher Berg whom I could ask if they would let me take a peek through their protective devices.
When I hopped in my car and drove to Hoher Berg, the eclipse had already started, though without protective glasses, you couldn’t tell. The sun was hanging fairly low in a mostly cloudless sky, glaringly bright.
As I drove along Wulfhooper Straße, I spotted cars or bikes parked by the side of the road and small groups of people gathered to watch the eclipse. I guess like me, these folks also realised that the wide open fields along Wulfhooper Straße would be a good spot to watch the eclipse. I also saw a hot air balloon hanging in the sky. Hot air balloons used to be a very common sight in summer in the 1990s and early 2000s, but high fuel prices drove many of the hot air balloon operators out of business.
Where Wulfhooper Straße meets the broader Ristedter Straße, I encountered a group of cyclists in full sports cycling get-up. Now cyclists aren’t unusual in this region, but whole groups of them cycling on the road and not on the bike lane in sports outfits is unusual. You only see that sort of thing during bicycle races or triathlons and then they normally close the roads to all other traffic. Nor was that group of cyclists the only group I saw. I passed two more groups of cyclists, also riding on the road rather than the bike path, also dressed in sports outfits. Did some participants of the Tour de France get lost and somehow ended up racing through the North German lowlands?
The solution to the mystery is more prosaic. There is a local cycling club, which hosts regular cycling meet-ups and rides on Sunday morning and Wednesday evenings, so that’s where the cyclists came from. And come to think of it, several weeks ago, while I was on my way home from Hamburg and had to drive through the countryside to avoid the everpresent traffic jam at the Weser Bridge on Autobahn A1, I also encountered a group of cyclists in the vicinity of Syke. Unfortunately, those cyclists were going in the same direction as me and since they were using the road, I had no chance of safely overtaking them, unlike yesterday’s cyclists who were going in the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, rude and entitled cyclists are a massive problem in Germany and the government is enabling their behaviour, because cycling is considered good for the environment. In the Netherlands, where there are even more cyclists for cultural reasons, the problems are actually less severe, because there are more attempts to create separate and safe spaces for cars, cyclists and pedestrians.
Solar Eclipse on Hoher Berg
Eventually I came to the place where Ristedter Straße meets Leerßer Straße. If you turn right, you get to the farm where I used to buy pumpkins and then – when you drive a bit further – you get to Westermark Woods, which was always my family’s favourite hiking spot. If you turn left, you get to Hoher Berg.
As soon as I got to Leerßer Straße, I spotted cars parked along the side of the road. Now Gessel-Leerßen is a tiny village and I’ve never seen so many cars parked there. In fact, I don’t think there are as many people living in Gessel-Leerßen, as there were cars parked alongside the road. Apparently, a whole lot of other people apparently the same idea as me to watch the eclipse from Hoher Berg.
I drove past the line of parked cars, looking for a spot to leave my car. I actually found one, but then opted not to park there, because parking there would mean blocking the bike lane and that would be just rude, not to mention illegal. And I can’t complain about rude and entitled cyclists and then block the bike lane. So I drove onwards.
The road leading up to Hoher Berg was lined with cars and motorbikes on both sides. No chance of finding a spot there. So I drove onwards, determined to turn around where possible and find a spot in Gessel-Leerßen proper, perhaps at the war memorial or in front of the carpentry company which was closed by now or maybe in front of the pumpkin farm. Yes, it would mean more walking, but walking is healthy.
But then, just beyond the last houses Gessel-Leerßen, where there are just fields all the way to Barrien, the parked cars petered out. At this point, the bike lane is no longer directly next to the road, but separated from the main road by a strip of grass. Some cars parked on this strip of grass and I did the same. That way, I was neither blocking the road nor the bike lane. And indeed, two cyclists chanced to ride past on the bike lane as I got out of the car. I asked them if they could pass or if I was blocking them and they said, “Don’t worry. It’s fine. We can pass.”
Hoher Berg during the 2026 solar eclipse viewed from Leerßer Straße. Note the cars parked all along the road to Hoher Berg.
I snapped the photo above from where I parked my car on Leerßer Straße. You can see the glare of the sun as its hanging low in the western sky with no sign of the eclipse. However, over the actual Hoher Berg, there is a crescent shaped spot, which I suspect is some kind of reflection of the partially eclipsed sun. I didn’t notice this, when I took the picture, only when I uploaded it to my blog. But the phenomenon shows up on several of the photos I took.
Another look at Hoher Berg during the 2026 solar eclipse, viewed from Leerßer Straße. And yes, there is the reflection or whatever it is of the eclipsed sun again. On the right, you can also see the town sign of Gessel-Leerßen.
A look towards Hoher Berg during the 2026 solar eclipse. Note the cars lining the street. If you look closely, you can also see some of the outbuildings of the old military base and the observation tower.
Even from Leerßer Straße, I could see that the observation tower was full of people, silhouetted against the twilight sky. Some of them seemed to have telescopes. I guess those folks were astronomy geeks who had prepared and waited for this moment for weeks.
A closer look at the observation tower on Hoher Berg during the 2026 solar eclipse. Also note the wind turbine. Some of the first wind turbines in our region were set up on Hoher Berg more than thirty years ago. I shot a documentary about those wind turbines for the Bremer Umland public access channel in the 1990s.
Tiny Koala also came along to watch the 2026 solar eclipse on Hoher Berg, in preparation for the 2028 total solar eclipse in Australia.
Here is a look along the street leading to Hoher Berg with cars parked on both sides. And since I happened to have the Tiny Koala from the Brisbane in 2028 Worldcon bid in my handbag, I took a photo of Tiny Koala heading to Hoher Berg to watch the 2026 solar eclipse in preparation for the 2028 total solar eclipse in Australia.
Unfortunately, they don’t make solar eclipse glasses for Tiny Koalas, so this Tiny Koala turned away from the sun, because better safe than sorry. Also note that the weird reflection of the eclipsed sun can be seen over Hoher Berg again.
Tiny Koala watched the 2026 solar eclipse on Hoher Berg. Note the other eclipse viewers standing in the field.
Note that I did not gaze directly into the sun for more than a second or so. You also couldn’t really look at it any longer than that, because the light was so blindingly bright. Nor did I point the camera at the eclipse for longer than the second or so it took to snap the pictures, since I did not have a filter for the camera either and didn’t want to wreck my phone camera.
Along the street that led up to Hoher Berg, there were small clusters of people standing in the field and watching the eclipse. I passed a small group of several men and a woman. The guys were wearing band shirts and armbands from a local music festival. They seemed cool and they were also watching the eclipse through the dark glass inserts of a welding mask just I had planned to do. So I stopped and asked them if I could take a look, cause I couldn’t find my Dad’s welding mask. They let me take a look and told me that they tried to buy solar eclipse glasses, but they were sold out, but one of them had the idea to use welding glass. We also chatted about the 1999 eclipse that wasn’t visible in our region due to the weather being a spoil sport. “And then there was another one…” one of the guys said, “…early in the morning.” “I remember that one”, I replied, “It was very early in the morning, five AM or so at the height of summer. I watched it from our terrace through my Dad’s welding mask.”
The 2026 total solar eclipse viewed through welding glass.
I tried to take a photo of the eclipse proper through the guy’s welding glass, but it didn’t come out very well, as you can see.
By this point, the eclipse had reached the point of maximum coverage. Through the welding glass, you could see the sun reduced to a thin crescent. With the welding glass, you couldn’t make out anything – the sun was still glaringly bright. Though the temperature dropped notably and the light became positively strange and the shadows long. We all noticed this and commented on it and the woman with the group – probably the girlfriend or wife of one of the guys – started to shiver. I took a photo, though it doesn’t really capture what it looked like in person.
Strange light and long shadows at the point of maximum coverage of the 2026 solar eclipse.
I first read that the light and the shadow turn strange just before a solar eclipse reached totality (and note that we reached 84 percent of coverage) in Douglas Coupland’s famous generation defining book Generation X. I read the book in the early 1990s, shortly after it came out, because I’d heard that this was the book about my generation, only to find I had very little in common with a bunch of Californians that were more than a decade older than me. Douglas Coupland was born in 1961 and ironically isn’t even considered part of the generation whose name he coined. However, I vividly remember the desciption of one of the characters going to see a total solar eclipse, most likely the one on February 26, 1979. And indeed, it was Coupland’s description of that solar eclipse that always made me want to witness one. It only took me roughly thirty-five years to get there – sort of, since this eclipse wasn’t actually a total one.
Someone said that the next total solar eclipse in Germany will be in 2081, when most of us will probably be dead. I said, “Well, there’s one in two years, but that one will be in Australia.” Some jokes about, “Okay, we can fly there.” I said, “There’s an event happening in Australia a week after that eclipse that I’m planning to visit, so I might as well stay a week more and watch the eclipse, too.” “Maybe someone will sell you their glasses for cheap or give them to you”, one of the guys said.
In the end, I never actually got all the way to Hoher Berg. But then, the eclipse was actually easier to see from the street than from Hoher Berg itself. Because the trees planted on Hoher Berg after the US Army left have grown pretty tall by now and would have blocked the view, unless you got a spot on the observation tower. And I was happy to leave the tower to the serious astronomy geeks.
After half an hour or so, when the eclipse was already receding, though the sun was still steadily sinking towards the horizon, I bade good-bye to my eclipse buddies and thanked them again for letting me take a look through their welding glass. The I walked back to my car. I met an elderly couple – elegant, expensive but boring clothes – who’s parked their S-class Mercedes behind my car. We briefly talked about the eclipse and the once in a lifetime experience. Then I got into my car and drove off, the sun still partially eclipsed behind me.
I had put my shopping basket in the trunk before leaving, so I could buy some groceries on the way home. Initially I wanted to drive to the Famila supermarket in Syke, cause it’s the nicest supermarket in the area and they have small flatbreads I love. Alas, Famila closes at eight PM, which is ridiculously early for a supermarket, and it was twenty past eight by now. There is an Edeka store in Barrien, but I don’t know that store at all, so I decided to just go to my local Rewe.
By the time, I’d finished my shopping and drove home, it was shortly before nine PM and the sun – now longer even partially eclipsed – was just setting, already an hour earlier than during the solstice about six weeks ago. The sunset looked nice and I considered stopping on Wulfhooper Straße to take a photo, but there was a car behind me, so stopping would have been awkward.
And that’s how I experienced the 2026 partial solar eclipse. I really hope that I will get to experience the 2028 total solar eclipse in Australia ahead of the 2028 Worldcon in Brisbane. Talking of which, site selection voting is still open, so if you’re a member of LACon (attending, virtual or WSFS only), head over there and vote in site selection, even if there isn’t actual race anymore, since Nuremberg bowed out to try again another year.
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