Don't mention the war!
So 17 year old me was on a college exchange trip to Germany. On top of working in a turbine factory and studying in a German technical college we were also treated to a few excursions (we visited a typewriter museum!).

One such trip saw us traipsing around a smelting plant. It was hot and dirty and not in the good ways that I have seen on the intertubes. Nothing very exciting was happening until a huge sodding bucket starts to move along a track suspended from the ceiling. Cameras at the ready! The bucket reaches the end of the track and starts to tip. A ton of molten metal starts to cascade into a container below. The heat is immense. The sight is strangely beautiful. Camera flashes are popping all around me.

Aware that my camera was a bit crap I decided to get closer to the safety barrier at the edge of the drop. I lean over trying to get a good shot. With mission accomplished I turn around and head back to my mates. As I do, I hear a collective gasp. At about the same moment I notice a tennis ball sized globule of molten steel in my peripheral vision. It had come within inches of grazing my face.

Strangely we were the last class ever to take part in the exchange program.

Good times.
(fan-dan-go because mutton chops are cool!, Thu 19 Aug 2010, 19:11, Reply)