This time over, winter really took its grip on Berlin. Temperatures dropped to well below -10°C for quite some time now. And we had some real snowfall, adding to maybe 30 cm height. Which in my humple, alpine opinion amounts to nothing at all, still. But it is able to fully stop a city like Berlin in its tracks.

As well as most of the northern half of Germany. They are flatlanders, by definition, and just don’t know how to deal with substantial snowfall. The idea to clear the roads for traffic just doesn’t come to mind first. Or maybe they just dont have enough machinery and staff for such events. So, of course, there are huge tailbacks forming, whenever there ist the slightest accident or any vehicle gets stuck in the snow. With people forced to freeze in their cars on the Autobahns for 8 hours or longer, as was the case during the last two nights. There was a ban on driving for trucks but the problem was, that there was not enough parking space for all of them, so some had to halt on the autobahn itself or ignored the ban, getting stuck in the snow, of course. Thus causing smaller cars to get trapped there, too. The Emergency Services had a hard time getting through, same goes for tow trucks. So, the regular winter chaos ensued.

But yours truly is out here in suburbia, really enjoying winter. Yesterday the sun came out in the morning, so I left my office and ventured out on the golf courses (which are closed for play, of course) to take a few pictures of the frosty glory. Have a look.