When winter is a time of reflection than spring must be a new beginning.

Dear Bloggers,

The daylight is finally staying a little longer again although the dark months are not over yet. For some, this period is a time of reflection. A time to reflect on all that is and to be grateful for coziness and togetherness. Others suffer from the gloomy weather and find it a bit more difficult to reflect their thoughts, yet everyone is looking forward to the spring that occasionally comes back to us with a nice bit of sunshine. The warm plaids and cuddly cushions will soon make way for cheerful summer colors in the house, the fireplace will be lit for a few more atmospheric evenings and candles will be taken out of the cupboard once more. Let this cozy period last just a little longer.

Time to save our energy

But for others, this dark and cold period is a struggle rather than a blessing. The fact that the days are shorter and darker means that the sun gives us its lovely rays of light less often and for less time. Less sunlight affects our mood and energy levels. And that is only logical! Just look at the nature around us. Autumn and winter are the seasons that symbolize stillness and reflection. Old ballast is released. Trees and plants drop their leaves and the sap flow stops to conserve energy. Animals retreat to their nests or hibernate for the same reason: to conserve their energy. With high prices, we as humans also have to be more frugal with our energy in the form of heat so a little coziness from candles also gives a little extra warmth.

With us as humans, it does not work differently. We too are nature beings and a part of the big picture and have to deal with these natural laws just as much. Only, over the centuries we have increasingly lost our contact with nature. We get further and further away from our intuition and often don't even know how the most basic things in life work anymore. The further you are away from your own nature, the less you listen to it, the more inconvenienced you are by the dark period of the year. Sounds logical right? Do you recognize yourself in this? Then it's time for a change.

Follow the rhythm of nature

The coming months are a great opportunity to reflect. The dark period of the year helps you turn inward. Follow this natural rhythm. Delete non-essential energy-hungry appointments from your diary and leave plenty of empty spaces. You may turn your antennea inwards, inside yourself. Experience how you are really doing right now and what your wishes and desires are. Consider this period an excellent opportunity for reflection, for stillness.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Find a place for yourself in your home and make sure it is cozy, warm and atmospheric. Go and enjoy yourself to the full and take pen and paper with you and ask yourself the following questions:

- What do I need right now?

- Where have I failed myself recently?

- What old patterns and habits do I want to let go of?

- What am I afraid of?

- Which sides of myself would I like to discover further?

- What do I want to spend more time and attention on in the coming period?

- What does my dream life look like? Where will I be? What will I be doing? Who will I be?

- What do I really want?

Ask yourself these questions and listen to the answers that come naturally to you. Don't reason the question or answer with your mind, but try to answer it purely intuitively. Is your answer to the question "What do I really want?" that you want to open a restaurant in Bali as a cook, but are now a teacher in a kindergarten? Then write down your wish even before your brain tells you that it is stupid and not achievable anyway. Be intuitively present and let go like a little child. Don't think too quickly in limitations but imagine that really anything is possible, without brakes. Visualize what your life would be like if your desire is fulfilled.

By ignoring your desires, you turn your back on yourself

Some of your desires may be very big and concrete fulfilment of them would mean a rigorous switch in your existence. Yet it pays off to name and write down your mental and physical desires and your emotional wellbeing. Ignoring them and shoving them under the carpet all the time will negatively affect your constitution. Ignoring dreams means ignoring yourself. Your wishes and desires have the right to be named and explored in any case. Perhaps answering the questions above will bring things into focus that you can change in a very simple way on your way to fulfill your dreams. Ultimately, it is also important that you link concrete actions to the fulfilment of your dreams. But for now, it's all about that first important step: giving yourself the peace and opportunity to dream and express your desires.

How do you make your desires tangible?

It is important to get to know your desires and then hold on to them. Make that as a  commitment to yourself. If you don't, chances are very high that they simply will melt away like snow in the sun.

4 tips to make your desire tangible

- Go Draw and just to be clear: you do not have to be an artist to illustrate your desire on paper. Keep it simple and draw for example an object that symbolizes your desire. Or draw yourself the moment your desire is fulfilled.

- Make yourself a vision board this is almost the same as a mood board you make for your interior. Again, you start working with images to visualize your desire and make a collage of it. For example, use magazines and leaflets to express your feelings in pictures.

- Start writing like what I do and write about how you want to fulfil your desires. See it all before you how it feels when your desire is fulfilled. How do you think, what do you do, who is with you and so on. And if you are not a word artist then you can just write it down your way you just have to do it for yourself.

- Find an object with which you associate your desire and which from now on symbolizes that which your desire is for. This is a very simple way that takes little preparation or effort. Pick a nice spot where you often see the object and place it there with the intention that you will fulfil your desire. Seeing the object will be a trigger and reminder for you every time you see it.

Why you shouldn't take action just yet

Take the time to discover your desire. Connect with it by dwelling on it regularly. Making your dreams tangible in a way outlined above ensures that you consciously connect with them. In this way, you lay a solid foundation in yourself from which you can later stand up for the fulfilment of your wishes with conviction and inner strength. Later... because the time is not yet ripe to step out in a big way. Even in nature, the seeds are still hidden in the ground, waiting for the right time to come out. Which does not mean that nothing is happening, because in the meantime, the underground roots are forming. With the germination of something new, comes a calm energy, trust and resignation. In nature, this happens naturally. For us as humans, the challenge is to surrender to that natural rhythm and not force anything with our willpower. So be careful not to take any rash actions now in this phase of silence and reflection. Later, in the still silent early spring, when the seeds have germinated under the ground and nature indicates that it is time to step outside, then you may take action

.

Feeling your impatience

Do you feel impatience? Do you want to go faster than the situation allows? Observe your inner restlessness. Find out where it comes from, but don't give in to it right away. Don't let your impatience lead you. Exercise yourself in surrender. Deep inside you know that you should not force a growth process by rushing into action. You often regret that afterwards. Only take action if you feel 100% certain that it is the right action at this moment. Don't feel that certainty? Then trust that the time for action is yet to come. Because now, now is the ideal time for rest and reflection.

Stay calm and unwind.

The Old Sailor,

Maybe February is the time for endings

Dear Bloggers,

The bus company I work for has offered me a steady contract for 32 hours per week. I am happy and on the other hand I feel a bit sad. I have been living my life on the wild side if I may say so. I have never been a regular Joe if it comes to jobs. All the jobs that I have done in my past are not all the best paid ones in the world. At least I had fun and saw an awful lot of our planet. And now it’s the last day of February the last day as a Temp. Tomorrow it is the first of March and my contract is activated. It gives me the shivers.

Maybe February is the time for endings. Some of the worst things in my life have happened in February. No, that’s untrue- they just feel like they all happened in February.  Endings tend to have a similar quality: a slowness that’s not the same as a bleak, cold, February morning. 

Then your blood seems like it will never be warm again, sluggish through your veins, now, it just feels like it’s gone underground. It’s not the slackness feeling of a hot, humid, summer, with the sun merciless on your face, turning your skin from brown to a burning and glowing sensation, when you can’t make the effort to even reach out to that cool glass of beer that your wife has placed on your table. No, this is the hushed, sticky quality of the air before the rain suddenly falls in a sheet, and you’re soaked from head to toe; your umbrella dripping uselessly onto your shoes, as the “road” that you walked underneath turns to a muddy river in two minutes flat.

What just happened, you ask yourself, even as you sigh and think “February”. Snow has gone, Winter just packed it’s suitcases and springtime has not arrived yet. Afterward, you try to pick it apart: And loop the past on a scratchy rewind, like those tapes you played over and over until they became scratching, static bursts between the snatches of that so familiar love song. Where the hell  is it, you think, just that one moment, the turning point when it all started there were you found the right one, the moment that you found love is coming undone.

You’re looking for the sign, that one dark cloud in the distance, the flash of lightning, but sometimes all you’re left with is the clear sky ahead and the thickening air, that is taking your breath.

One morning I woke up and found a baby spider that  has crawled into the folds of my fading grey lounging set that sits outside the deck in our garden. It has been unexpectedly cold the last few nights and the little rascal had probably sought out the warmth of the couch cushion.

I flap my hands at the furry resinous intruder: unsurprisingly, it moves not an inch. “I’m giving you ten minutes while I brew the coffee for myself and the tea for my wife”, I tell it solemnly: “after that, you’re out”.  When I step out again, my hands slowly warmed by my steaming mug of coffee, it’s gone. I feel both smug and guilty; like I’ve won a battle and lost a more important war; like I’ve missed the forest for the trees, like I have once again, failed to read the signs.

How are you feeling, my wife asks me. “Okay”, I say and she accepts it for what it is: a barefaced lie. We are, neither of us, strangers to this; when all the stuff inside is so tangled that the only possible answer is just a simple “Okay”.

There’s a dissonance that leaves me tongue tied; the inexplicable chasm between what I know I should feel, and what I do feel; akin to letting yourself in with the key and just finding yourself in a stranger’s house. This is familiar territory, I remind myself. You’ve been here before, you know how this goes.

Endings are not an undiscovered land. And yet. I look up The 5 steps that I learned in the past years again; try to see what I’ve missed. Everything, it looks like; there is no progression, no gradual climb down. I’m just here. But there must be, I think, increasingly desperate for something, anything that feels familiar.  But no, this is the fun house mirror version of myself, everything in its place and just that bit distorted, rendered unrecognizable.

I imagine what a therapist would ask me: how are you sleeping, are you eating regularly, do you shower, do you make the bed, do you change your clothes, do you exercise? Answer: Well, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, but I never did, it’s not unusual. I still hate work for the usual amount, not more or less.

You should be happy mate, a colleague  tells me, I’m not saying who had some rough times in his past. I tell him a long and involved story about how I have lost many people on my way that kept me company. This is not a problem but having a contract is also having some obligations towards my job before it was easier to get a day off as there were no strings attached, to me life is like a friendly cow a huge white-and-black speckled beast. It moos at odd times and reminds me that life goes on; that February, in fact, can be great for some species: plentiful green grass, the fresh air that comes with some springtime smells; outside it’s getting more and more pleasant, of course with slightly unpredictable weather and cool nights.

I lie in bed and listen to the night sounds the squeaking of the roof, the occasional drunken song from two houses away, the rain showers that bash into the windows, a faint siren in the distance from a firetruck, some kind of chirping sound.

That gives me exactly that feeling that you’ve got during the long lazy summer nights. That moment your sitting at the kitchen table and a moth wanders in, flirts with the dazzling white light and then wanders out. It’s not hard to fall asleep on these days, when my thoughts seem to have no particular direction. When I wake up, I don’t remember my dreams.

Fact: time moves forward and I am getting old.

Fact: February seems to last forever.

It’s cold at night, during the day it shifts rapidly from sunny spells to bashing rain showers. Running around in winter jackets and sunglasses on. I’m doing my job for the last day as a Temp. Tomorrow I am one of the guys with a steady job. It feels like a new episode in my life, is this the final destination to my pension.

How are you feeling?, I used to ask others; and now I ask myself: How are you feeling?, the answer is that It feels pretty double and even a bit emotional. Although inside of me the salty blood is still flowing through my veins. I will be an Old Sailor forever.

The Old Sailor,

Enjoying the Autumn Sun

Dear Bloggers,

Soon the holidays are coming and autumn is all of sudden there. The weather is a bit funny. Some days stormy weather is bashing on your windows and a day later you can walk around in a shirt as it is nearly 20 degrees Celsius. Anyway I am enjoying the beauty of the landscape that is passing by. 

Autumn colours are so beautiful. And this fall we have been blessed with a couple of sunny days and more than only a few rainy ones. The air is getting crisper and you can smell the lit fireplaces through the chimneys. I love that smell. It means winter is on it’s way.

I love autumn, for so many reasons, and yet it invariably manages to make me sad, I find that autumn turns the still pool of my nature to the very dregs, and kicks up all sorts of murky stuff while it is at it. Coals slowly turning into diamonds, the moon is trapped beneath a branch, and, like the coming winter, it can also cut to the bone, winter winds that twist and turn and are hard to evade.

A series of disappointments that a few years ago I would have either sublimated into hard physical work, or run away from, or sunk deep into and found it hard to get out of again.  This year seems to be different.  I am simply sitting with my feelings, even it feels impossible. 

I saw a butterfly today on my morning walk – a red admiral that settled on the muddy footpath, churned and turned by some farm vehicles. It flittered about, close to the earth as though weighed down by care, and couldn’t seem to lift its way up into the open air, and then it settled, opened its wings to the sun and waited. Just waited. And I waited with it. The sun seemed to fill it, to renew it, colours achingly bright on its wings, and then it picked itself up and flew away, looping and twisting over the fields into a new day.

Perhaps that is the lesson that I need to learn here? To open myself to love and pain in equal measure, and trust that whatever happens, the sun will always shine and I will always be able to pick myself up and move on. Autumn proceeds slowly, hedgerows turning golden in the sunlight, berries picked up by the birds as they prepare for winter. Sometimes it is hard to appreciate all this beauty around me, but it is always there, regardless, just waiting for me to see it once again and to know myself a part of it, connected to the land even as my feet walk upon it, my mind is a million miles away.

Accomplished a bit of Sunday cleaning today, vacuumed the house, rinsed the toilet and got myself ready for the evening shift. Last night I lit some candles. When I pulled the curtains as it was dark and wet outside.  “Hmmm....autumn is really here” I said to my wife. “Poked up” our central heating system and during the day I took the water ornaments out of the garden and stowed them in the shed. 

It’s getting too big for me to pack em all up about every year, so it’s going to a new home as soon as we sell this one and hopefully next spring we’ll live in a smaller home. It’s not that I’m getting too old to carry a big ugly chunk of machinery through the house. It’s not that. I just don’t know what is going to come. Maybe we need to change our garden plans. I really don’t have a clue. I see it as a waste of my time and energy.

Fall is settling into Friesland. The sun is lower in the southern sky, too tired to heat things up anymore. It’s cold enough outside that you could wear a jacket without sweating, and yet still warm enough to walk around without a coat at night. I know because we just got back from a nice little walk to the mailbox in the village centre which is just north of here by about ten minutes. There are already a lot of desiccated autumn leaves blowing around and the grass is still green in every yard. 

It is the in between season as we all know that in a couple of weeks this year will come to an end. The holidays are sitting at our front door and the garden is ready again for Christmas as the lights are installed again.

We are ready for the holidays, it is only a couple of weeks away.

The Old Sailor,

What about the 11 city tour on ice?

Dear Bloggers,

The title of this blog is one of the most appreciated, but rare slogans in the Netherlands. When it is used, usually by radio or television, it means that it has frozen in the Netherlands; not just a little for a short time, but really hard and for a long time. The slogan announces the Eleven City Tour, one of the most heroic skating events. The winner receives a medal of 8 grams of alloy and eternal fame.

route of the 11 city tour of 1997

Professional skaters and amateurs skate for 200 kilometres on natural  ice through the provence of  Fryslân and have to collect stamps on the road to their much-sought-after medal. The Eleven City Tour is a nostalgic event. The last one was held in the last century, in 1997; as a compensation a similar tour is being organised abroad in Finland or Austria.

Despite the global warming the Eleven City Tour is on again, but now in cross media. The social media already starts about this heroic tour and soon it will be subject on radio, television and internet. The launch of the tour itself needs more nights of  low temperatures for at least a week If you got curious now about this special event in the North of the Netherlands. The movie theatre reports and television broadcasts since 1929 have been brought online.

Post to get stamps

The project is a cultural heritage project of the Eleven City Tour association, the Skating museum, the skating sports association, , the institute of Image and Sound, produced by the national broadcast companies NPS and VPRO. The project intends to show what has been preserved, but it also aims at user generated content such as photographs and movies.

Memories from participants can be recorded in sound, image or text.

Only the ones that make will get a cross medal

Pinning a date for a coming tour is not that easy as we do not have any influence on the weather. But it just started freezing it will be on the earliest the second week of February I guess. To me it is almost tempting fate, as the Eleven City Tour needs harsh winter weather. The real thing is not like any other skating event it needs a hell lot of people to make sure no one gets hurt or whatever is needed many Frysians will volunteer to help out.

Happily enough, you can now stay inside (temperatures went down to minus 17 degrees celsius last night) with the cross media Eleven tour city and look at the most heroic tour won by Mr Reinier Paping on 18 January 1963. I was not even born yet but people talked about every winter again how harsh this tour has been. They also made a movie about it called the “de hel van ’63” translated as the hell of 63.Let us see if this marvelous event will come up this year as was not one for the last fifteen years. The kids will be off from school to watch it either live or in front of the television set as public transport will be disrupted due to the event. This year might be the chance and many colourful images will be broadcasted for the first time on media like twitter.

Getting the ice skates out again.

The Old Sailor,

winter is on the way

Dear Bloggers,


This morning it was five o’clock to get up and get to work. As soon as I had my breakfast and rubbed the sleep out of my face, I open the curtains to few the world who looks brutal and dark at this time of day. When I walk to the car I feel the cold air tipping on my nose. It is a big difference to last week as temperatures have dropped to 6 degrees Celcius.


It’s getting cold. The nights are starting to draw in while the mornings seem to take forever to stir. I’m beginning to slow down, to curl up in bed for ‘just 10 more minutes’ in the mornings, to seek out sleep earlier in the evenings. I’m walking slowly, as my body is getting stiffer more painful again but surely this will be my first winter in a better shape than the last couple of years.

I’ve never found winter an easy season. Everything seems stark, minimal and asleep. My hands and feet wish to retreat into my body as they become freezing cold and numb. The layers I have to wear drive me nuts because I’m too hot inside and yet freezing outside. I feel constricted by all the clothes needed to keep me warm and I long for the days when I can slip on a pair of flip-flops, a pair of shorts and a t-shirt .



A week ago people hopped on the bus wearing t-shirts, summer dresses and shorts. Today I saw the first ones wearing gloves, hats, caps and scarfs. The air is cold and chilly and slowly night is turning into day. The hard blue sky is bautiful and explains the bittter cold breeze that hangs around. You can imagine that they were quite happy that I had turned on the heater in the bus. It is strange that in such a short period the leaves have turned colours and cold weather took position, weather men predict a cold and snowy winter. And that will spice up the job again as delays give trouble and I think that it is really funny.

For me, winter is all about slowing down, about stripping bare, going back to basics. It’s about inventing new ways of living a full life that focuses the majority of the time on indoor pursuits. It’s about connecting with friends and family, sharing the warmth of the holidays together. It’s about generosity with your neighbors, wishing each other well in this darker season. It’s about ruminating on the fact of life that everything one day will die.


We are still a good couple of months away from ice, winter woolies and the festive season, but already I’m preparing myself for the shifts my body and mind will need to take in the coming months. I want to take the next few months as an opportunity to reflect on my life thus far, to question ‘who I am’ right now and who I will be when this body also sheds its last leaf.

I want to take more time to sit, to question, to think about the circle of life, the parts of me that are dying in order for me to be reborn again next spring and who that makes ‘me’ when the old is perpetually falling away to make room for the new. It makes me sad as i realize how many people that have left us in the last couple of years. On the other hand I see my eldest daughter turning into a woman. Someday there will be the first love and a new circle begins.


I hope that the winter will not be to harsh and not to many snowdays as they only cost money. I start the car and drive into the darkness of the early morning with the radio playing softly and the heating is on full power. So, when I’m up in the dead black of the early morning and nothing is stirring, what will my first thoughts and actions be in that moment? Who will I choose to be when the world appears to be so still as if it’s not yet breathing? How will I make those moments count at a time when it’s much easier just to indulge in the warmth of my bed and my dreams?

The Old Sailor,

Oh the weather outside is.........

Dear Bloggers,


Today it is a nice and sunny autumn day but thios will change rapidly by the end of the week.

The balmy temperatures of today will be a distant memory as winter weather will arrive in Northern parts of The Netherlands this week, the wind will get from colder areas and snow is expected on Thursday or Friday at the latest, just in time to put a chill into travelers planning for the next week's holiday weekend. Saint Nicholas his presents might even arrive a bit later due to the weather.

The good news, forecasters at the National Weather Service say, is that the snow showers expected at the end of this week but it will not be that much.Next weeks weekend will be a different story, however. A cold stream is bringing plenty of moisture to the area is expected to work its way towards the Southern parts of the country, the forecast said this morning. From Saturday morning through Sunday morning 6 to 10 centimeters of snow likely will fall in the Coastal areas, and after that the rest of the country might get some wet snow.

While the cold air stream is expected to blow over by Thursday, travelers in the northern regions should expect pretty chilly winds and below zero temperatures. The crews will be busy on the highways and main roads treating them with de-icer and throwing down salt and sand for traction.

Next week on Tuesday the weather could be cool and showery as a weak storm continues to drop out of the East. Colder air will sweep in from Poland early next week, hitting hardest east of the country and pushing temperatures into the single digits. Even below numbers at night are mentioned, so maybe it is time to find the ice skates. The weather should improve by the 4th of December but according to the weather stations this might become a serious cold winter in Europe.

"This is the time of year when drivers need to change their mindset to winter driving," The weatherman said. "Remember to bring warm clothes with you, a shovel so you can dig yourself out, don't follow too close and be sure to check with ANWB on weather conditions before you get out on the roads."

Getting a christmas feeling already eventhough that is a bit early for me. I will ignite the fireplace and drink some hot chocolate with rum.

The Old Sailor,

Extreme winter weather

Dear Bloggers,

Snowstorm hits also North of Netherlands it all started yesterday, warnings on the local radio to stay indoors if you do not need to go out.
At this moment it finally stopped snowing and the wind is slowly calming down, severe weather conditions and busses stopped running.

It is still winter and it reminds me of my childhood, the weatherforecast is predicting a snowstorm.
When I was a young bloke in 1979 we had similair kind of weather only difference was that it had been raining the day before and this iced up the roads, on top of that it started snowing and the wind was gusting which resulted in snowdunes with a height of more then three metres.

KNMI initially expected that the inconvenience to the south would be limited, but gradually the sky was closing, while the hard east wind was very unpleasant. In the far south the rainfall started around noon as rain. A few hours later, the first major rainfall in the river area, but as rain and occasional snow flakes. The average temperature was 1 to 2 degrees celcius. But slowly it turned into glazed frost.

In the early evening light snow began to fall (barely in the Southern Netherlands), subject to the windshield. Around midnight the snow line slowly pulled the precipitation zone northward. The wind caused already some snow drift.
In the North of the Netherlands it started snowing from 04h, followed by some freezing rain and glazed frost
The ice lasted all day in the north. Initially this was remaining to ice zone north of the Top of Noord-Holland to Meppel. The rainfall amounts were not small. The northern front moved southward in the evening with snow and increasing winds from a storm to East North East. The big snow storm started.
14-15 February 1979: the polarbear is on the loose.

The snow area spread to the south. The wind increased in the north as far said to stormy with highs severe storm. In the meantime raged north unprecedented heavy snow storms. The oven on the snow and ice fields could find no foothold, except behind trees, farms, in villages, etc.

When there was daylight again, it revealed the seriousness of the situation. Even then it had to snow dunes formed to 1.5 meters, so many ways (even motorways) were blocked. Many people could no longer reach their jobs, why not buses, cars were snowing in. Schools closed. It is impossible to get a good picture of it? That day was staying out a painful issue. Vision was ranging from 50 to 5 meter and was sometimes cut by the sharp snow drifting


snow was really drifting and blowing snow in your face and that at a temperature of -5 degrees and a wind at stormforce at least . Blizzard is a barbaric word, which does not seem excessive.

The snow dunes were locally blown to incredible heights. Especially in Northern-Friesland and Groningen were heights of 4 to 6 meters pretty normal. Many villages became isolated totally and some alone standing farms had snow blown up until the roof. All highways in the north were closed, there was even a ban to drive.

In some places, there was an emergency: telephone lines were damaged and power lines broke through the heavy ice load and severe storms. Crisis centers were established in local bars. Snow removal had hardly any meaning.

Soldiers came to help to re-open roads and villages from isolation to get new deliveries into the local shop. Among the people ruled by the common struggle against the white enemy a great togetherness, except in the local grocery store, where many crowded to get some food to misplaced fears of scarcity. The small bakery on the corner, who was always to expensive if they compared it to the big supermarkets in the city, the baker was suddenly anybodys friend. The local grocers kept a hard regime as we had been three days isolated from the rest of the world. Regular customers had some priveleges.

Some houses were that far snowed in that they came out with only the chimney above the giant dunes of snow.

Some hard facts of the snow storm in northern Netherlands:
Duration: 90 hours snow drift
Precipitation: estimated 15 to 30 mm
Snow Dune Height: 3-6 meter
Average temp.: -5 -6 Degrees Celsius
Windgusts: 100 km / h

At this moment large parts of Europe suffer from the winter weather. In parts of Great Britain public life is quiet because the roads are impassable. Many schools are closed.

In Southern France is the city of Arles due to the snow without power, also in a part of Holland there was a power failure for several hours. Heavy trucks may not drive because of the iced and slippery highways.

The Czech border has been closed to freight traffic because the roads are too slippery.

Germany expects a lot of problems this weekend due to drifting snow in the Northern part several people have been stuck in their cars on the highway as they snowed in due to a traffic jam caused by truck that slipped of the road. Gymnasiums are closed as a precaution because they might collapse due to the weight of the snow.

German households are also advised to have food, medicine and drinking water in stock for the snow storm that would come that is what the BBC reports.

The Germans also expect heavy snowfall today that could lead to local outages and public transportation will seriously disrupt.

The National weatherstation just tells that the weather alarm will not be changed and people in the North are advised to stay indoors, as outside temperatures are fierce and roads are being difficult to drive on. Busses have started up again although there is a lot of disruption due to the icy road conditions.

The Old Sailor,