"Everybody is in disbelief" in German students' hometown
HALTERN, Germany -- There were no classes at Joseph Koenig High School in the small town of Haltern on Wednesday -- just grief counseling.
A makeshift memorial on the school steps simply asks the question, "Why?"
The 16 tenth graders and two teachers on board Germanwings Flight 9525 were on their way home from a class trip to Spain, visiting Spanish students who'd traveled to Haltern last year.
"They were just excited to see them again, to go to Spain, and just have a good time. And now they won't come back," said Adina Hahlbom, who counted several of the teenagers who lost their lives as her friends.
"I still feel like they are going to come here again and just tell us what the trip was like, and tell us about their future plans. I just can't believe it," she said.
In this rural community of just 35,000 people, nearly everyone knew someone who was on board the plane.
"A lot of the parents still have to let it sink in, and have to see how to cope with this terrible loss they're going through," said the school's vice principal, Susanne Baldauf.
She is grieving for her two colleagues, and sixteen young people she'd watched grow up. She met with some of their parents this morning.
"Everybody is in disbelief, and a kind of state of shock -- the whole town, really," Baldauf said.
Across Germany on Thursday, to remember those who died in the crash, there will be a moment of silence at 10:53 a.m., the time contact was lost with the plane on Tuesday.