Our author has the feeling that his Childhood was snow. Everything was white. Now he has checked to see if it is true.

Eddigehausen, the district of Göttingen, in January 2014. Also at the time: there is no snow in Winter photo: Reuters

I Would the child I once was, then I would go in the evening when Insbett the snow, yearn for, and the next Morning, I would watch from the window, and very probably in the garden behind the house and the street in front of the house would be white and covered the whole of the night it had snowed in Eddigehausen, the village below the castle Plesse near Göttingen, and I would bite suddenly in a great hurry to get up, would hastily plunge my mug of milk down a couple of times to bread and Jam, in order to be as fast as possible outside, outside in the snow.

And after school, at lunch, I would hurry back to be with the other, again outside in the snow. We would grab the sled and into the forest to go all the way next to our housing development, the “New village”, high above and to the right in the direction of Bovenden, then left in the forest. The best toboggan run, throughout the day we were there, until the evening, when it was already dark. Cold, cold, happy, home, there was hot cocoa.

Or we are dragged through the village; some of us, the Larger, were made of wood with a snow plow residues built, we moved and pushed to the sidewalks free. Of course, we rang at the houses and hoped for a few marks in G. s there was pistachio, which were particularly, he was Persian. For hours we were on the road, every Winter, every day in the snow.

it Was not so, at the end of the 70s beginning of the 80s?

The toboggan run, throughout the day we were there, until the evening, when it was already dark.

at Least in my memory of the Winter snow were rich and white, “strictly”, as it wrote to my mother under the winter pictures in my photo album. Today, I miss those winter days, hope snow, dancing flakes, the whole night, and in the morning everything is white. I visit weather sites and scan the Four-day preview, which is probably reasonably reputable. And I see only temperatures between seven and ten degrees and the clouds in front of sun, sometimes rain drop symbols.

My daughters, seven and ten years old, with hardly any snow that Winter, after the birth of the older of which was “strict”, at least in the snow, in 2010, I don’t know it yet, you. A long time ago. You want snow, like I did then. You crave it, the idea, everything would be white, must be magical for you as it was for me. I have experienced snow every Winter, you hardly. But is this true? And this is the climate change? From the remains of the snow because it is warmer?

The Green 40. In the taz on the weekend of 11./12 January talk, the Federal Chairman Baerbock and Habeck about social policy, about how a double top works and how you are dealing with errors. Also: In February, the Federal constitutional court decides on a complaint concerning the euthanasia – when is allowed to be accompanied to the suicide by a physician? Always starting on Saturday at the Kiosk, in the eKiosk or equal to in the practical Wochenendabo. And in the case of Facebook and Twitter.

I asked at the German weather service, the very nice woman on the Haase and the very nice Mr Weiner have me rows of data sent for the years of my Childhood and for today. Back when I was a kid, went every Morning at seven by the German weather service measuring station Bovenden, get out and measured the snow depth.

And, Yes, there were days with snow, but there were also days on which no snow lay. Then it must have looked the same as it is today, on 9. January 2020, the Plesse-Cam shows, the scans, the area of the castle ruin above the village on a daily basis: green-brown field mark is the dark of the forest, the tile roofs are red. White flash for only the facades of some houses.

Although there have been in the ten years from 1979 to 1988, a total of 654 days with Snow cover, and to measure in the years 2010 to 2019, only 411, but in the meantime, then, as now, weeks where the weather service measuring officers had nothing.

My memory deceives quite simple; the days with snow that I wished for in the winter months, have been compacted into a long, white, “strict” winters. Desire and memory are one, become unfair to every snow-free day today. The climate change that is also documented by other indicators, can but not reading, the measurement site is too small and the period too short, the blanket of Snow to little meaningful. The temperatures are rising, also in lower Saxony, the data of the German weather service show clearly. Snow can fall at any time in the Winter. On the snow-poor years follow -rich. In 1979, there were in my village, 68 snow days, in 1989, only one.

In the big city we live in today, the Winter anyway, as it was then in the Mediterranean mountains. Who knows, maybe we will ride soon in the mountains.