What’s so special about winter? What are people looking forward to when winter time is around the door? Are they excited about the scenic mountain views, they see in the movies? Spending the evening in front of a cozy chimney, drinking hot chocolates and watching some of those scenic mountain view movies?
Being a Dortmund native, I mostly consider winter as the cold, dark, wet and grey time of year. Winter is dirty and ugly. The closest scenic mountain view is 750km away (42hrs on a bicycle and a horrific climb to the finish line, I checked that…). The coziest chimney feeling comes up, whenever someone in the neighborhood decides to burn rotten wood outside in a fire bowl and last but not least, there’s no such thing as snow in Dortmund. There’s just grey and yellow mud. Winter is a nightmare in Dortmund, trust me!
However, I still needed to take some nice winter pictures for the seasonal content page on this website. So, when the weather forecast predicted snowfall in Dortmund a few days ago, I knew I had to come up with a plan to make the most of it. It was supposed to snow in the middle of the night, so the plan was pretty simple. Get…out…of…bed…early. That was it!
And guess what, it worked! I found myself outside, slipping through real, brand new snow in my not so brand new sneakers at around 9 am. It didn’t get any earlier on a sunday morning, but it was early enough. I was pretty much the only person outside. It was just me, my camera and the vehicles of the city road service, dashing through the snow in a hurry.
I knew where I wanted to go, so I fought my way through tons of snow, covering the sidewalks and finally arrived at my destination for the day, the campus of the university. I was lucky to discover some nice spots, took a few shots on my camera and got back home at around twelve. Two hours later everything was gone. Five hours of snow, that is all the winter wonderland Dortmund has to offer. But I still had the pictures on my camera as a prove, that there really was actual snow in Dortmund…
-Dennis
Visit the seasonal content page on my website for more winter pictures from that day:
DennisTheCyclist 