…hot air balloon crash-land in the park behind the house you are staying in.
But last night, it did! (Must be a Swedish thing!)
We were on the decking in the garden when we heard the roar of a hot air balloon engine (the bit that fires up to generate heat – not sure what it’s actually called).
It seemed to be very close, and when we looked in the direction we could see just the top of the hot air balloon above the trees.
Sofia, with her local knowledge of Göteborg, said she knew where it was and rushed out the door towards it. I followed on behind, and we both arrived at the scene about 2 minutes later
(Picture © Andreas Brink, not part of this site’s CC licence)
As you can see, the balloon came down and hit a big tree in small grassy area next to an intersection.
When we first arrived, the envelope was still fully inflated and the skipper was asking locals to pull on the guide ropes to stop the balloon getting caught in the branches of the tree.
It didn’t work, and the envelope slowly deflated – covering the tree with white fabric.
The balloon basket was full of people on some kind of tour. They seemed to be in pretty good spirits considering they had just survived a crash-landing.
I turned out the skipper couldn’t gain enough height after he took off (perhaps because the balloon was overloaded). He had originally tried to land on the intersection itself – which must be dangerous as it is quite busy with traffic.
That landing was aborted so he crashed the balloon into the tree instead, as they were approaching a residential area with no where else safe to land.
In the end two fire engines had to come out – one with a cherry-picker ladder to free the balloon! But not until the local “Polis” came out to talk to the pilot – and generally snigger at what had happened!