9/11. What have you been doing that day?

[pianowolfi]

What have you been doing and where have you been on 9/11? I just came to that question because I'm currently listening to Johnny-Boys composition on that subject in the audition room. Everything that happened that day is burnt in my memory.
   The day before I've been performing Schumann's pianoconcerto in Prague. With an orchestra of scholars, amateurs and a couple of professional musicians. On a terrible piano with loads of dust inside and a sound like a tin bucket. Very few people in the audience. After that performance I was slightly depressed and went downtown with a violinist to drink a couple of beers. That Czech beer I wasn't used to and so the day after I was vomitting for hours while we were driving to the next location with the bus. We went to Eisenstadt, the place where Haydn has lived and worked for so many years. It was beautiful there. I started to feel better, so I could join the others to visit the castle. I the little queue at the cash desk somebody mentioned something like: "Isn't it terrible, the first tower is already down..." Another person interrupted him harshly "But we are in the castle here!!" I could not understand, what they were talking about and why the second person didn't want to hear that. We didn't know yet about what just had happened in America. After we had seen the Eisenstadt castle we listened to the news in the bus. And it was such an undiscribable shock... i cried and cried and couldn't stop. I felt ashamed for crying because I was on that tour with a lot of teenies and should have been an example for them (As i thought, my crying wouldn't make things better). The whole day there was such an incomprehensible mood, the sun seemed to shine in a muted world....

[ada]

I was watching the 10pm news when the story broke and I watched it unfold in disbelief.

When it became apparent that the US was under some sort of terrorist attack the first thing I thought was that the world had changed forever.

Because I was working in a newsroom at the time, and the Australian Prime minister was in the US at the time,  the next thing I thought was oh my god it is going to be REALLY busy tomorrrow.

I began work at 5.30am the next day and after 12 hours straight of saturation news and images and scrambling for interviews with Aussies in NY I went to pick my kids up from the childcare centre and into an inconceivably different world where small children where playing, oblivious to it all.

[mephisto]

I saw that the on an extra news program that the first plane had crashed into the first tower. Than I went to a soccer-match wich my team won 4-0. I came home and heard about the 2nd plane.

This was a terrible event, and I can`t even imagine how the people who lost their close ones must have it now. And I am extremely sorry that something like this have happened.

But honestly this event hasn`t changed me or my outlook on live a single bit.

[zheer]

  I was working 60 hours a week with a group of totall racists, anyway one of these racists came and told america has been bombed,since i had been so bizy at work and reading law in the evening when i saw the event on TV it was like something from a horror movie, therefore i found it rather horrific. One of these racits spent months prior to 9/11 talking to me haw he wants to wipe out blacks ,indians,jews, so the event made him very happy and he finaly got my attention.

[pianistimo]

i thought i was watching a movie on tv.  then, when i saw people covered in dust running and screaming and the newscasters saying that something terrible had happened - i couldn't believe it wasn't a movie that i jsut turned on.  then, i started praying.  for the people still inside as i saw the whole thing fall down.  it was worse than the challenger explosion- which i just happened to have the tv on at night for that, too. 

[prometheus]

I watched it all live on tv. I came home from school and I saw my brother was watching tv, the news apparently, which is rare. So I knew something had happened. But at that point it was only an obscure story about smoke comming out the one of the towers. So that was before the second impact. Though I don't really remember realising or seeing a second impact happen. I think that at that point there we already camera's running.

One thing I do remember is that one of the towers fell. Actually, it was not shown on tv. But suddenly there was a huge dust cloud. The tower that had fell was totally covered in dutst and not visible. But no one pointed out that one of the towers may have collapsed. I went past most news sities I can receive, BBC, CNN, Euronews, german and dutch news channels. It took them about half an hour to realise the first tower had collapsed.

Watching all this unfold was like a movie. You wanted more to happen. More sensation, more drama, more action. It was surreal.

I also remember watching until deep in the night, where CNN had a reported with a mobile phone-like video showing images from explosions in Kabul. Speculating that the US may already have attacked Afghanistan.

[lau]

I was in 5th grade and in school in the morning and we watched on tv. None of us thought much of it, a lot of people said "cool!" when the towers collapsed

[nanabush]

Grade 7.... my english teacher was kinda late, she came running in the class in tears, and told us what happened.... she didn't want to turn on the tv.... we got a supply teacher within the next 5 minutes... my stomache was turning, cuz I think she knew someone who had been in new york and wasn't getting through to them 

[thalbergmad]

I was working in a Bank in Glasgow, when a drunken Scotsman came in shouting that the Twin Towers were going to collapse.

I threw him out.

I never got the chance to apologise.

Thal

[elspeth]

I was in London house-sitting for my sister while she was on holiday. She doesn't have a TV and I hadn't had the radio on so the first I knew was when a friend rang and said had I seen the news?

I didn't see any of the images until the following week, which in many ways I was rather glad about. Gave me a chance to process it a bit first. London was a scary place to be for a few days afterwards, people were scared there would be planes aimed there too.

I was also working for a bank at the time (different one to Thal!) and we lost several people in one of the towers. Not good.

[mephisto]

I was working in a Bank in Glasgow, when a drunken Scotsman came in shouting that the Twin Towers were going to collapse.

I threw him out.

I never got the chance to apologise.

Thal

Most times when someones sais hahahah in their post the do usually lie. This time it is true:

Hhahahaahhahahahah

[arensky]

I was sleeping late. My wife came and woke me up and said "the country's under attack, terrorists have blown up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. You might want to get up."

As I got out of bed and sleepily walked to the TV in the living room I thought "Who would do this? Right wing nutters ?" BTW this was about two hours after the towers fell. When I saw the television images I just sat down and watched for about two hours. I remember thinking "why did it take them so long" because I first expected this in the 1980's, when Reagan was intervening in Lebanon and Nicaragua. I have often wondered why terrorists of different stripes have not been bolder in attacking USA targets and citizens, we have virtually no internal security, and still don't five years later. It's so easy for terrorists to strike here, it doesn't make sense there haven't been more attacks.

Anyway I had to go to the grocery store and bank and then teach for several hours, which I did, thinking that "if we react to this, let it disrupt our routine, they will have won."  I thought about the people in the London Blitz, and went about my business.  Of course, that's easy when the attacks are on the other side of the continent.

One of my best friends is a conductor for New Jersey Transit, the railway system that brings commuters into Manhattan Island from NJ. He had a very busy and never wracking day, concluding with helping to evacuate Penn Station after it had been shut down. He saw the second tower fall from NJ, before the train goes under the Hudson.

Another friend had a ticket for Flight 93 (the one that left Newark (?) ) but ended up on the next United flight to San Francisco (?) , don't remember why. This plane landed in Omaha and he got together with some other stranded people on the flight, they were able to rent a car after about a day and they drove back to the New York area. There were no non-military aircraft in US skies for several days after the attacks.

9/11 is the most significant world event to occur in my life time, so far. I think there will be another attack, probably worse than 9/11.

[nicco]

I was watching friends on TV when my mother came rushing through the door shouting "turn on the news turn on the news!!!!"

Ill never forget what i saw when i changed channels, just as i had changed the 2nd plane crashed into the second tower, i thought it was a movie at first cause it seemed so unreal but quickly understood what was going on.

since then ive seen a movie on google that gave the idea that bush was behind it all. I hope thats not the case.