A Real Winter

On one of the first few days in Berlin, I got ready to go out and explore the city at 5:30PM. Though it doesn't sound that late, it gets dark really early during the Winter. But when I went down in my tennis shoes, the entire sidewalk and street was frozen over with a sheet of ice. It was even colder than it was earlier in the day (-3 Degrees C). Just as I took my first step, I slipped and fell on my butt and this one German guy who was gracefully gliding on the ice down the street just laughed at me. I saw lots of people slipping all over the place so I accepted the fact that there was no way I was going to make it anywhere safely. I went back upstairs and told my host Mom, who then decided to give me snowboots to try on, but told me she didn’t think it’d help cause they were for snow, not ice. With no better options, I put the snowboots on and walked down to the door, took one step, and slipped AGAIN; another hard fall. Needless to say, after slipping 2 times right on my butt, I called it a day and settled for the fact that I still had plenty of days ahead to explore the city. According to my host mom, that day was the worst day of the Winter. In fact, after the first couple of days, the rest of winter quarter had basically no snow; it was just really really cold and there was lots of rain. As a Californian, I'd still prefer the mild winters we get at Stanford, but you definitely start getting used to the harsh weather and then it's not so bad. Plus, there's nothing like eating a nice, warm pretzel when it's snowing outside.