Snowy Days

We went to Rothenburg today. And our blessing of snow followed us. It has been rather funny to watch. We left America with more snow than we've had in years. Then we came to Europe, where I was expecting snow. And lo and behold, in Berlin, there was snow frozen to the ground. They were just coming off a record cold streak. Both Prague and Krakow had snow frozen on the ground as we walked away, and the little tiny bits of precipitation that came were in the form of snow.

At Auschwitz, it was actually snowing, and snowing a lot. There was already some on the ground, but a bunch more came down while we were there. Then, we went to Vienna and Graz. They had just gotten a new batch of snow. Apparently, in recently years, they haven't gotten much snow at all. They used to have skiing, but haven't really been able to open for long because of the lack of snow. The few days we were in Graz they happened to have some. They had gotten some on Christmas, but it had melted, and this was the next stuff.

When we go to Munich, there wasn't any snow. And it was above freezing, so none left residually. I thought we wouldn't have snow there, and we were prepared for rain. The next day, armed with umbrellas and ponchos, we did get rain, but it was mixed with snow, and after a while, turned to straight snow and started to stick. It made for a wet cold day, but our pattern held.

When we went to Neuschwanstein, and there was snow on the ground. It was up in the mountains, and they were all covered with lovely snow. And then, while we were there, it snowed more. All the bare branches were outlined in snow. Like a magical wonderland. It was perfect.

Then, we went to Rothenburg, and there wasn't any snow. It was quite cold the day we arrived, but the next morning, it had warmed up. We were headed to town and it was sort of raining, then slowly it turned to snow, and soon it was snowing quite heavily. Giant cotton ball-esce flakes. So to dodge the windswept snow, we ducked into the Christmas store, looking at beautiful fully decorated trees and giant nutcrackers, as well as scoping out ornaments.

Once back outside, the snow had stopped, but we got to walk through the bit of accumulation to a famous church there with an intricately carved wooden altar. We stopped in at a bakery and got a Schneeball, traditional from Rothenburg. Tastes a bit like a doughnut mixed with baked pie crust. We got to see the wall that encircles the town, probably the most famous thing about Rothenburg. Then we headed to the train station. We still had some issues catching trains and making connections, and ended up on a bus again, but we made it, and didn't waste much time today. We still have to get to Salzburg, but it shouldn't be too hard.