Friday, December 18, 2009

snow problem

A little pun in case you missed it, or in case you thought I meant that snow was a problem.

No, quite the contrary, here in Germany, snow, is no problem.

So we Brits here are feeling quite smug at the moment. Britain has snow, and doesn't the world know about it? The transport system grinds (or maybe that should be slides) to a halt, people can't get where they need to be and have to sleep in their cars and it makes headlines.

The problem for Britain is that it doesn't get enough snow to remember how to deal with it, there aren't enough snowploughs and gritters let alone salt to spread, and people don't know how to drive in it and so on.

We have snow here, just enough to excite the children (and the dog, to whom snow is another foodgroup) and enough to ice up the roads. But do we worry? No. There's no need, we have winter tyres for one thing (extra deep tread or something, so extra grippy - I'm sure there's some science behind it) and the other thing is experience - last January we awoke to snow, deep, deep snow and then the temperature dropped WAY below zero for a week, so the snow stayed, for a week, the kids went sledging every afternoon after school (which wasn't cancelled - not even one single day) for a week - even the adults went sledging. The part of the river near us where it's dammed, froze enough for people to ice skate on.
You get the picture? Serious snow. But all the main roads were ploughed - immediately, so as long as you could navigate the hills between our house and these roads you were fine.
Germans are well organised, can't have a bit of weather coming between them and their fresh daily bread now can you?

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