Surviving the German Winter Part I: Salt it. Salt it Good.

I came back suntanned and smiling from my Christmas vacation only to find Germany suffering under a plague of fog and gray. This happens every year, but I tried not to think about it when I was cycling around the big lake near my parents' Orlando residence. A few weeks later, we're adjusting, and as a brave, experienced winter warrior (with icicles hanging from my beard as my huskies struggle to pull textbooks over the Swabian Alb), I feel it my duty to offer the following survival advice for sun-stroked southerners. This is the first in a four part series on surviving the German winter.

When the winter comes, the Germans salt it, and salt it good. I used to live in the Washington  DC area,  and no one bothers salting anything until at least two blissful snow days pass and everything from the local schools to the national government shuts down. This annoyed the hearty northerners, who see snow as an invitation to the office, but for the rest of us, well, hello snowball fight! In this part of the world, there's no difference between work day and snow day. I awoke one morning after it had snowed through the night only to see streets and bike lanes so clear, you'd think the Red Baron had flown over Plochingen in a salt-shooting crop duster. Well, no, that's not how it really happens (unfortunately). As soon as potential snow is reported, salt truck swat teams are deployed all over the nation. They are the salt of the earth, and if the earth loses its saltiness, all the Daimlers slide into the Neckar River causing world-wide economic inefficiency, which is the worst possible thing that could happen. Also, since the cyclists here aren't the kind of Warmduschers who use sub-zero temperatures as an excuse to sit by the heater, the city is kind enough to salt most of the bike lanes as well. Warmduscher literally means "warm showerer" but really means wussypants. In Germany, you're a wussypants if you waste valuable energy resources by heating water to wash yourself.

However, the state doesn't salt most of the sidewalks. That it leaves to the power of collective legal coercion. Back home in the USA, you can spill hot coffee on yourself and and sue McDonald's for millions. In Germany, the quickest way to get rich is to slip on the ice in front of some irresponsible person's (likely, a foreigner) house who failed to salt and shovel before sunrise. Thus, every snow day at 6 AM, Germans of all ages can be seen working like ants to de-ice the sidewalk in front of their house with the harried look we all get when thinking about potential lawsuits.

Even as this excess of salt turns the average snow-on-the-street into a grayish sludge, the snow on the roofs and mountains remains exquisite.  In my sunny Christmas post, I joked about preferring a sunny Christmas to a white one, but a good blanket of snow is better than pretty much any other winter weather north of the Mediterranean. You see, for this southern expat, the worst part of winter has nothing to do cold or ice or frost, but everything to do with the darkness. The sun barely bothers to rise this far north and usually wears gray clouds like a dull fur coat. The lack of light turns the world pale and bleak and lonely. This is worst when combined with that weather we now call "wintry mix." The clouds spew this horrid precipitation that's somewhere between rain and snow and sleet and spit. Temperature and water particles combine as if the heavens are mocking the lack of commitment so pervasive in my generation.

Snow, though on colder days, gives winter a surprising warmth. The mountains and the rooftops are frosted white, and each snowflake works together to catch whatever light their is and reflect heavenward, reminding every pilgrim that in the darkness the sun still exists, and spring will be here soon enough. Let it snow.