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.