kA*

I awoke to more snow, not unexpected although not necessarily wanted either as it meant I had to get out of the house and shovel the footpath before 7:30 - this is the law & this is Germany, land of red tape and regulations.

My dog walk was through almost pristine snow which was lovely but was accompanied by the sound of sirens, Germans are totally geared up for winter weather, cars have to have winter tyres but this doesn't necessarily mean that they know how to drive in such conditions, there was an accident yesterday just around the corner from me involving a minibus and a smart car, goodness knows what was going on today.

My blip had nothing to do with the sirens, I think there was a medical 'emergency' going on in one of the houses, I didn't hang around to gawp, I haven't acclimatized that much!

My morning got better from then on really, a group of expats (including 2.5** other blippers) came over for coffee and cake so 2-3 hours were spent discussing everything from the theming of a party when the combined ages of the two celebrants will be 69, to the inability of the German schooling system to provide stand in teaching for maternity leave and illness cover.

We were interrupted at one point by my (very rude) neighbour, who inquired as to whether one of my guests had parked 'really stupidly' meaning that he couldn't clear the snow from the pavement, she went to move the tiny Fiat 500 that was clearly completely on the pavement while we bitched about the fact that he was only just, at 10:30, clearing the snow (we can all be so German when it pleases us) and he had the cheek to ask my friend where she'd got her driving licence from...

It could have been worse, the one winter we had knee high snow and there was a car equally 'stupidly parked', my lovely neighbour dumped all of his snow on top of it, that backfired on him though because the weather got much colder and the snow (and the car) stayed for four weeks.

* kA = keine Ahnung = no idea, as in, I have no idea what these two emergency vehicles were doing in this narrow street, but I thought that as it wasn't something I'd be able to take a photo of tomorrow, it'd make a perfectly satisfactory blip.
** one is about to sign up.