Germans crack me up when it comes to winter weather. Maybe I just find it funny because I grew up in one of the coldest parts of the the USA and snow is just a HUGE part of life, but seriously, Germans provide silly entertainment in the winter.
Example One: Its 40 degrees out and Germans have their thick winter jackets, mittens, and hats on. Tony and I get looked at all funny because we've still got flip flops and shorts on.
Example Two: Tony and I were waiting for the bus the other day. It was WAY late (as usual) so we stood and watched a man across the street clean snow off his car. This was the highlight of our weekend. If he hadn't been only 10 ft. away from us, Tony and I would have been laughing hysterically. It took him (NO LIE) 40 minutes to clean four inches of snow off his car. 1. He had a scraper so small I'm almost positive it was made to use on a Matchbox Car. 2. Instead of turning on the car and cranking the defrost or even just turning it on, he kept spraying this liquid crap on the windows and then stared at it while it SLOWLY only kind off melted the snow/ice on his windows. 3. Instead of pushing the snow from on top of the car off the side of the car onto the ground, he kept pushing it back onto the windows which he has just spent 10 minutes spraying with his dinky little spray bottle.... which obviously meant he once again had to spray and scrape the windows. 4. By the time he would scrape one side of the car's windows clean, the other side's windows were frozen again... so he'd get out the spray bottle again. 5. Heaven forbid there be one little flake of snow on his car. He went around his car to get every little tiny piece of snow off of the car with his little Matchbox Car scraper. 6. Then FINALLY 40ish minutes later the guy gets in his car and drives off without warming the car up at all. If he really cared so much about his car to get EVERY LITTLE piece of snow off of it, you'd think he'd at least warm the thing up for a little. It was like watching something from a movie... like from the Three Stooges or something.... Then after spending all the time watching the guy clean his car off, Tony and I realized that the buses don't run on holidays, so we'd been standing outside for nothing! Sure was entertaining though. I wish we'd have been able to film it.
Example Three: It takes them like 4 days to plow 4 inches of snow off the streets. That's an inch a day, I guess. It probably doesn't help that most of their snow plows are glorified four wheelers with plows on the front. I've only ever seen two "real" snow plows.
Example Four: The other day, Tony calls me into the kitchen to look out the window at the woman shoveling across the street. Instead of shoveling the snow horizontally across her driveway, she was pushing the snow all the way from her house down to the street (not a short driveway). When she got to the end of the driveway, she would struggle to pick the snow up and throw it. The funny part: 1. She was throwing all the snow in the street right where the plow was going to plow it right back into her driveway and 2. half the snow she was throwing was being blown right back onto her driveway.
Example Five: People just plain don't shovel the side walks here. I'm getting calves like the Hulk from walking in all the snow. Its murder on your boots!
One thing to remember is that it's illegal to have your car idle for more than 3 minutes in Germany for both noise and air pollution concerns. That is funny though! My neighbors have been pretty smart about the snow so far. They don't plow our street, so we all pitch in to keep it decent.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the snow plows we have in our area look just like the ones back in the US, but I did see little garden tractors with snowblowers on them in the city; it was pretty hilarious. He was holding up all the traffic!