It has been snowing here like nobody's business - I saw online somewhere that it has essentially been snowing for six weeks and I believe it. The sidewalks are now covered with weeks of accumulated snow, snow that partially melted and then refroze as dirty slush, the grit used as traction on the sidewalk, and more snow. If you looked at a cross section it would be like some kind of sedimentary rock formation except colder.The big excitement here is that the Alster, the lake in the center of Hamburg, is frozen solid enough to walk on - which apparently half of the city has been doing at the weekend. The ice isn't quite thick enough for the Alstereisvergnügen, the festival on the frozen lake that happened in 1996, but the sheer possibility of it is all anyone has been talking about. I haven't actually gotten over to that part of town to see the lake, but we woke up last weekend to about six inches of fresh snow and took a walk around our white, white neighborhood. There is a canal that we walk along quite frequently, and it was frozen - enough to walk on it, which we of course had to do along with other folks from our neighborhood, some of whom were (unsucessfully) trying to ice skate.
The Elbe is also frozen again, and again Zoli and I took the ferry to check out the ice, along with the half of Hamburg that wasn't walking on the frozen Alster.
No sun this time (that has been in short supply lately, it's been snowing too much), but enough ice to make docking at the ferry stops a multi-try operation and waiting for the ferry a multi-shiver one. Thankfully the cold and the grey are somehow ameliorated by swimming in a toasty-warm outdooor pool with snowflakes falling on your head.Not only is it shiver-in-your-underheated-office season, it is also Berliner and Heißwecken season. Berliners are probably familiar to you, the good old jelly doughnut, though depending on where you are in Germany they aren't always called Berliners. In some areas they are called Krapfen and (ironically) in Berlin they are called Pfannkuchen - particularly confusing because in many parts of Germany Pfannkuchen means pancake. (There was a very spirited discussion at lunch one day between people who use the word Pfannkuchen to refer to completely different things.) I have to say that I was never a fan until I ate the Berliners here. They fall firmly in the category of sweets you will only find between Christmas and Lent (also eaten for New Year's apparently), and when you find a good one, well my goodness. My favorite at the moment is filled with Apfelmus (essentially apple sauce), in part because at our local (fantastic!) bakery they are coated in both regular sugar and powdered sugar, so you make an unholy mess eating them. (Don't do it on the U-bahn, you'll regret it. As will your neighbor.) But also the apple filling just fits - it feels wintery and comforting, but also has enough of a tang to let you know that spring is on it's way.
Heißwecken on the other hand say no such thing. They're more of a wallow-in-winter deal, a sweet roll studded with raisins, almost like stollen in texture, split in half, filled with whipped cream and dusted with powdered sugar. There is often a little dot of cranberry compote underneath all that cream, but that too says winter. Heißwecken are a Northern German treat, something I had never heard of before I came here. They seem to be related to the Swedish semla and are really only here until Fat Tuesday, and if you've done your duty by eating a Heißwecken every day leading up to it, it will indeed be a Fat Tuesday.
