Stranger from a strange land

Undisturbed by anyone for thousands of years, it lay deep underground below where the city centre was later to grow. Who could have suspected that this unassuming rock (with a 3.5m girth) was to become a local media star and give the local authorities a bit of a headache? Its five minutes of fame began during an exceptionally warm March in 2011 after construction workers digging the second metro line came across it. The stone was excavated and for the first few months it didn’t raise much interest among the locals. But things were a little different at city hall. A commission was held to determine the fate of this ice age relict and our erratic even got its own separate file in which all the documentation about it could be collected. Meanwhile the boulder was enjoying the sun that it hadn’t seen for thousands of years – except that it didn’t get much sunbathing in because that year the weather was exceptionally capricious. However, all was about to change. The s