Britta's Letters from her life divided between city-life in German's capital Berlin and life in a Bavarian village
Showing posts with label Snowstorm in Northern Germany 1978/1979. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Snowstorm in Northern Germany 1978/1979. Show all posts

Friday, 12 January 2024

Unforgettable Snow

 


Do you remember those days around 
the turn of the year 1978/1979?

I will never forget them: A storm with wind strength 7 was coming from northeast. 

Husband and I had visited my parents in Bremen for Christmas. Then husband grew very ill with influenza, thus we wanted to go back to Mainz. 

My father, a wise man, said: "If you want to drive, drive now very quickly."  

481 km distance between Bremen and Mainz - I drove our old blue Merc, with highly-feverish husband on the backseat. 

I was very young then and had I got my driver's license in 1976 - megalomaniacal after two years I applied for a contest by Cosmopolitan: a rally through the Sahara - that was my notion of "adventurous". (How come I was not elected?)

Now fate served me the total opposite: 

all the time at that drive home a huge black bank of snowclouds breathed down our neck: the snow came nearer and nearer, and I had to drive very fast. 

We reached Mainz, exhausted but lucky - a few hours later "Land submerged!" - a blanket of snow covered huge parts of Northern Germany which was sunken under snow - and hundreds of cars were stuck in more than a meter high snow drifts.