Snowed In

In the past week, North Germany has been blessed – or cursed, depending on your POV – with an unusual amount of snow. You already saw some of it in my post about my road trip to Hildesheim, but this weekend, we not only got an extra dose of snow, but also a veritable blizzard.

The weather service had forecast a snow storm for Friday and urged people to stay at home if at all possible. Schools were closed in Bremen, Hamburg and Lower Saxony to the usual cries of “But I have to work. Who shall take care of my child?” Oddly enough, you never heard these complaints back in the 1980s, when the schools were closed because of snow approx. one or two days every winter, even though there were a lot of families where both parents were working or single parent families back then as well.

That said, at least they announced the school closures ahead of time. Back in the 1980s, they often announced school closures so late that you were already on your way (an hour early, because busses weren’t going and biking was mostly not possible, so I had to walk), almost as if they were waiting to see if the forecast snow would really fall. The announcements were also not handled very well. For example, I remember that they announced that schools were closed in Regierungsbezirk Hannover (administrative region Hannover), which was a problem, for while we knew our town and county, no one of us had any idea what Regierungsbezirk Hannover was and that it included us, because Hannover is more than a hundred kilometers away. Supposedly, Regierungsbezirk Hannover encompasses the old Kingdom of Hannover, but that still wouldn’t have included us, because in times of old the border between the Kingdoms of Hannover of Oldenburg ran straight through our town – actually eight independent villages smashed together by the much hated 1974 Lower Saxony community reform – and we were on the Oldenburg side. And yes, the fact that they combined villages that were part of different states only 28 years before into a single “town” shows how clueless the 1974 community reform really was. And the differences between the former Kingdoms of Oldenburg and Hannover are still notable even today.

Since the internet was only a distant rumour in the 1980s, school closure announcements were made via radio, so I remember sitting in the kitchen at six AM waiting for the radio news to see if I had to head out into the snow to go to school or not. Worse, the announcements were made not on any radio station that teenagers and their parents actually listened to, but on NDR 1 Radio Niedersachsen, which no one under sixty listened to in the 1980s, because they only played Schlager and Volskmusik and that was old people music. We actually complained about this to the Lower Saxony Ministry of Education and Culture and received the reply that NDR 1 Radio Niedersachsen was our home radio station and that’s where the announcements would be made. And no, they couldn’t make the announcements on Radio Bremen, because Bremen was a different state. NDR 1 Radio Niedersachsen has morphed into an general oldies station by now and no longer plays Schlager, but I still avoid them, if possible.

I went grocery shopping early on Thursday morning to stock up for the weekend and found that the stores were fully than usual on a Thursday, because other people were also stocking up. I have a full pantry as well as two bakeries, a butcher and a fruit and vegetable stall in walking distance, so I wouldn’t starve even if I couldn’t drive for several days. The three closest supermarkets are about two kilometers away, so in theory I could walk there as well (and I have in the past), but lugging groceries home is a pain. That said, I forgot to buy garlic and have to ration mine and the gorcery store was out of spaghetti (pasta always goes first in case of peceived or real emergencies), so I had to resort to linguine and capellini of a brand I don’t like as much. I’m very particular about my pasta – only Italian brands, only pure semolina, only bronze cut.

The snow was supposed to start on Thurday night and it did. So did the wind. I took some trash out late on Thursday night – normally I would have waited until morning, but I wasn’t sure if I could get out to the trash cans the next morning without stomping through the snow or risking slipping on icy ground – and there was some very light snowfall and a light dusting on the ground in those areas where the previous snow had been cleared or melted away.

Friday

This is what the same backyard looked like at 8:30 AM on Friday morning:

You can’t see where the terrace ends and the lawn begins anymore and the planter is partly sunken into the snow. The rosebush on the left is still mostly free. The photo is blurry, because it was heavily snowing at this point and I couldn’t use the flash.

This is the same view at one PM on Friday:The heavy wind has piled up a massive snow drift on the terrace, while other parts of the terrace are pretty much free of snow. The rose bush is half buried, but still visible. The planter is half buried as well.

Further back in the garden, the two raised flower beds in the middle of the garden, which are surrounded by brick walls that are approximately thirty centimeters high, are complete buried by snow. You can’t tell where the lawn ends and flower beds begin. Only the lamps and my garden Arminius, a 1.5 meter tall replica of the giant Arminius monument near Detmold created by artist Hans Kordes, stands in the snow up to his knees. It’s okay. Arminius could handle three Roman Legions, so he can handle a bit of snow. He’s a tough guy.

Note that it was still snowing at this point.

Here is a closer look at the snow drift that has formed in the backyard. The terrace is walled in from three side, so snow drifts tend to form there. As a kid, I usually referred to these snow drifts as our backyard Mount Everest or Matterhorn. That said, this particular snowdrift first looked like the Eiger North Wall and then, once the overhang formed, it resembled the Grand Canyon.

So now I had s a replica of the Grand Canyon in my backyard. There also was no chance of going out there, even only to take out the trash, without getting massively soaked. What is more, the garden clogs I keep by the side of the backdoor, were completely buried in snow as well. Even opening the backdoor was difficult, because snow had piled up against it.

So I only took a single step out onto a part of the terrace where there was little snow, to take this photo of the Masters of the Universe Classics Icer in his natural element.

You may wonder what the front garden and my driveway look like. Well, it turns out that the god of snow drifts smiled on me, because the same wind that decided to build the Grand Canyon in my backyard, also kindly swept my driveway free, so I didn’t have to do it.

As you can see, there hardly any snow at all on my driveway. Meanwhile, the boundary wall to my garden, which is approximately thirty centimeters high, is completely buried in parts as are the bushes.

Since going out wasn’t a great idea, especially since it was still snowing and still windy, I didn’t. Nor did I take down the Christmas tree, since there is no way I or anybody else can get the tree out of the house until the snow melts.

In my part of Germany, the Christmas tree traditionally stays up until Epiphany Day, i.e. January 6. However, I had appointments on both January 6 and 7, so I couldn’t take down the tree then. I was initially planning to do it over the weekend, but if the actual tree has to stay in the house for another few days, it may as well stay decorated.

Saturday

On Saturday morning, my backyard looked like this:

The Grand Canyon is still there and even bigger than the day before. The rose bush on the left is completely buried and I wonder whether it will survive this.

By now, two days into the snowpocalypse, I was facing a problem. Because I keep my supply of bottled mineral water in crates in the garage. I had brought in four bottles on Thursday, because I know that getting the garage might be a problem, but by Saturday noon, those four bottles were pretty much empty. So I could either drink tap water – which would have been perfectly acceptable – or I could use the alternate way to get to the garage.

In the photos above, you may have noticed the annex on the right. The annex is part of the house. My Dad had the brilliant idea to build an indoor pool in that annex, except that it was never finished and the “pool” is basically a big hole in the ground, though many of the armatures, pumps, etc… have already been installed. I have some ideas what to do with that space – and no, it will never be a pool, because the energy costs would be way too high – but it’s not a priority for now.

My Dad anticipated that getting to the pool in winter might be unpleasant so there is a subterranean passage that leads from my basement to the annex. Yes, I have a secret passage in my basement, though it’s not that secret, because it has a regular door. Though people are usually very impressed when they first see it. The not-so-secret passage is dark, because the lights don’t work properly, and I need a flashlight to navigate it. The stairs up to the annex are steep and unpleasant – no idea what Dad was thinking – and the annex is dark as well, though the lights in there do work.

However, the annex has a connecting door to the garage. So I ventured through my very own secret passage to go into the garage, fetch more bottles of mineral water and then carry the bottle back to the house in a basket.

While I was in the annex, I took this picture from the door to garden, showing my garden at an angle you don’t normally see:

Now my house and the terrace sit on a small natural hill. The annex is maybe a meter or a meter an a half lower than the house and the lawn slopes downward to the back of the garden.

Except that the lawn isn’t sloping in the photo above, because about a meter’s worth of snow has piled up there. The four steps on the left that lead from the terrace down to the annex and garage level are mostly submerged, but still navigable – sort of. Next to those steps, there is a terraced flower bed. It is completely buried in the snow and you can’t see anything of it. Also note the trail of a bird in the snow.

In short, venturing outside wasn’t a great idea on Saturday either, so I didn’t. Instead, I stayed indoors, took some toy photos and wrote a toy review you’ll eventually see at File 770.

Sunday

On Saturday night, the temperatures dropped to minus fifteen degrees Celsius, which is about as cold as it ever gets here in North Germany. The house was warm and cozy enough due to my furnace and the heating function of my air conditioning system working overtime.

Nonetheless, I was starting to experience cabin fever. Besides, it had stopped snowing, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. So on Sunday morning, I bundled up in warm clothes and decided I would go for a walk.

In the past, when we had snow, I often hopped into the car and drove out to the Westermark Woods for a snowy hike, sometimes together with my Dad, who also liked hiking. However, going hiking all alone in the Westermark Woods in the snow would have been too dangerous, particularly given the conditions. Even navigating my own backyard isn’t without risk – you’ve seen the meter high snow drifts and boundary walls, planters and bushes buried under the snow. Now imagine going for a hike in the woods and tripping over a root, a rock or a tree stump buried under the snow. And should I fall and hurt myself and be unable to get up on my own, there’s no one who could help me or get help. It would take some time, until my neighbours realise I’ve gone missing and even then they wouldn’t know where I am.

The Westermark Woods aren’t overly busy, which is why I like them, but they’re also not completely deserted either. There are dog walkers and hikers there. However, it would probably take some time until someone finds me – and remember that it was still seven degrees below freezing or so. If I’m really unlucky, the boars that live in the Westermark Woods would find me before any humans do. So nope, the Westermark Woods are too risky.

Instead, I decided to head to the Habenhauser Moor park, which is our local park. Not as nice as the Westermark Woods or Warwer Sand, the other major hiking area in my area (which would be very busy, because it has a great sledding hill), but nice enough. I also took Icer along for some snowy toy photography.

I ventured out through the backdoor, so I could take out the trash that accumulated over the past two days and also took some photos of Icer and his pet, a Schleich Eldrador ice wolf, trudging across the snowy plains of Eternia/the massive snow drift in my backyard.

The Frosty Adventures of Icer and his Faithful Wolf

A Hike in the Snow

Once I’d made it down the steps half buried in snow that you can see in one of the photos above, I got another unpleasant surprise, because it turned out that snow had piled up against the door that leads from the backyard to the driveway and eventually the street. The snow was frozen solid and I had a hard time pushing the door open far enough so I could slip through.

I carefully picked my way along the snow covered streets and sidewalks. Theoretically, you are legally required to clear the snow on the sidewalk in front of your house, your driveway and the path to your door. But in practice, not everybody does this. And besides, the cleared surfaces are often more slippery and dangerous than the snow-covered ones.

Here are some photos of what I saw en route:

Park am Habenhauser Moor

The Habenhauser Moor is our local lake. Once upon a time, it was much bigger, though pretty much no one who’s still alive remembers that time. Part of the lake was drained sometime after WWII to build housing. There’s also the rumour that leftover ammunition was thrown into the lake after WWII. I’m not how true that rumour is, but the Habenhauser Moor was never a lake you could bathe in.

Though I didn’t know the name Habenhauser Moor until I was an adult. When I was a child, we called the lake “duck lake” because there were ducks and even a pair swans living in and around the lake. There was always a park with a playground surrounding the lake and when I was a kid, my kindergarten was directly adjacent to the lake. Us kids loved chasing the ducks and swans around – they loved us much less. One of the two swans actually bit me when I was about four, which taught me to stay the hell away from swans.

The park and playground were remodelled sometime in the early 2000s. At around the same time, our old kindergarten was torn down and houses built on the gounds, while a new kindergarten was built next to the schoolhouse you can see above. I have no idea what the reasoning behind this decision was, especially since the new kindergarten is surrounded by a gigantic fence and looks more like a prison than a place for little kids and the playground at the new kindergarten is a pale shadow of what it once was.

Personally, I suspect the motive is pure greed. Because the land around the lake is valuable, too valuable for a kindergarten. Real estate prices have exploded in my town and the policy of our council is “build as many houses as possible, preferably apartment blocks, so more people move in and we can get more taxes”. They even evicted the local riding club, when their lease was up, to build even more housing for the stereotypical young families who are the preferred inhabitants. Honestly, during one of the worst building sprees in the 1990s, when they plopped hundreds of houses onto what had been fields before, a guy from our neighbourhood wanted to buy a house in that new estate, because his current house was tiny and rented. The council refused to sell to him, because “this neighbourhood is for families and we don’t want single people here, especially not men, because they might be a danger to the kids.” Honestly, they accused this poor guy of being a potential child molester, just because he was male and single. Besides, knowing him, he was a far greater “danger” to the mothers than any kids, because he was a noted philanderer who had affairs with several married women in the neighbourhood.

In fact, we should probably count ourselves lucky that we still have the park at all and that they didn’t build housing estates there as well. This makes me suspect that the rumour about ammunition and hell knows what else thrown into the lake after WWII is actually true and that the council is worried potential soil contamination.

So lets have some photos of the Park am Habenhauser Moor in the snow:

When I was a kid, the Habenhauser Moor lake was a lot more accessible. Shrubs and trees were only at the place where the Kleine Rönnecken meets the lake, everywhere else the shores were free.

The Habenhauser Moor lake was also our ice skating spot, whenever it was frozen, which happened somewhat more often in the 1980s than today. At the entrance to the park and near the lake, there are “Ice skating forbidden! Danger to Life!” signs, which are there all the time, not just in winter. But these days, you couldn’t skate on the lake anyway, even when it is frozen for once, because you can’t got to the lake anymore. The photo above shows what is probably the most accessible spot. Everywhere else, there is dense shrubbery and even fencing around the lake. I guess they’re scared that a kid might fall in and drown, though that never happened at the Habenhauser Moor lake for as long as I can remember.

Two kids did fall into the other lake in town, Kiebitzmoor, and drowned, when I was in third grade or so. That was a big deal at the time. One of the kids was the younger brother of a boy who was a class below me.  I have no idea if Kiebitzmoor Lake is fenced off, too, these days, since it was never accessible to the general public, just to the people who lived in the houses around the lake, which unfortunately included the families of the two kids.

As I was strolling through the park, an elderly woman walked towards me from the opposite direction. We exchanged greetings, the woman looked at me and then said, “You’re Cora, aren’t you?” Turns out this was Mrs. Gottschalk. I’ve known her daughter Anja since kindergarten. We were friends in elementary school and then had a fallout over something undoubtedly stupid (I can’t even remember what it was) sometime in fifth or sixth grade. Later, we went our separate ways and attended different classes, though we still saw each other in school and town on occasion.  I chatted with Mrs. Gottschalk for a few minutes and asked her to give my regards to Anja.

Getting out of the house and going for a walk in the park certainly did me a lot of good. Once I was back home again, I made lunch for myself and later took some toy photos for an upcoming review at File 770.

Monday and Beyond

In the night from Sunday to Monday, the temperatures once again dropped to well below freezing, though it didn’t get quite as cold as the night before. More snow also fell overnight, though halfway though Monday morning, that snow turned into icy rain, which meant dangerous icy streets. School was cancelled once again, much to the upset of the usual suspects, and people were warned against going out. Luckily, I didn’t have to go out, so I stayed at home and got some writing done.

By Tuesday morning, much of the snow had melted. I had initially planned to go grocery shopping to replenish my pantry, but I took one look at the sludge covered street and thought, “Nope, I can survive another day without shopping.”

I hope that by Wednesday moring, the streets are clear enough that I can go to the stores. And that’s it for the snowiest weekend in years.