There has been very little snow in Salzburg until this past week. Mother Nature seems to be making up for lost time and it has snowed heavily for days on end. I am from Wisconsin so I am used to snow. I am also used to Wisconsin style snow removal which for the most part is speedy and efficient. European snow removal is neither.
As near as I can figure, the snow removal system is one of laissez-faire. Everything is left to melt and/or re-freeze. Sometimes there are gravel bitties that are casually tossed on the sidewalks, but generally the roads AND sidewalks are a series of frozen ruts. This can make ambulation hazardous. I live a block away from a senior housing complex and I see them out teetering in their trachten with trekking poles, tentatively making their way to the Thursday market.
I shouldn't say that there is NO snow removal as the snowplow DID come through at some crazy hour in the middle of the night and cleared a small swath down the middle of the street. There are no policies regarding snow removal and parking, so the apartment dwellers who park on the streets take their chances with being trapped by the snowplow detritus. Yesterday I saw one such unfortunate attempting to dig his small vehicle out from under a mound of snow. He obviously wasn't used to doing this since his solution was to pitch the offending snow either under his car, effectively high-centering it, or under the car parked directly in front of him, high-centering that one as well. I am afraid that I was a bit of a voyeur in that I HAD to stop and watch this brand of insanity. I knew he wasn't going to get out but he hopped in the car and floored it. Had this been an effective strategy, he certainly would have driven his vehicle into the rear end of the car in front, but as it was, the wheels just spun and he sank deeper into the snow. He repeated this procedure several times, shoveling the snow back under the car, then gunning the motor. It was gloriously futile.
I haven't checked yet today to see if he ever made it out.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment