Residents of Erftstadt struggle to comprehend how their familiar landscape became treacherous terrain
Anatoli Neugebauer is standing just a hundred metres from his family home, at the edge of the Blessem district of Erftstadt, a commuter-belt town 12 miles (20km) south of Cologne. Even though flood waters from the Erft River had begun to recede by midday on Friday, he still had to wade through waist-high brown water just to get inside the stuccoed terrace house.
“It’s completely indescribable,” says Neugebauer, 40. “A catastrophe.”
