Signs of Spring / Frühlingserwachen

Yesterday, Herr Baumgartner began my class by gesturing towards the window, a bleak and cloudy view towards the back of the castle, and said, "Spring is not here yet. Maybe next week." While spring officially began four days ago, spring has not sprung in Salzburg.

Last night we woke up to an amazing wind/rain/snow storm where the rain and snow was blowing completely horizontally from left to right, not a single bit of vertical motion as the wind whisked it all by. This morning there was a covering of slush and snow on everything and mini-blizzards kept up sporadically throughout the day. People are cranky (crankier than usual), random strangers complaining bitterly about the weather as they pass you by.

There are few signs of spring here: no flowers about to bloom, no trees starting to bud. The only sign that spring might be on its way is the street sweeping truck, clearing away the inches of Splitt that have built up over the winter months. The truck went through our neighborhood yesterday, circling around again and again, sucking up the Splitt and washing the road until it was just about clean enough to eat from. See the before and after pictures below, the split piled about two feet or so out from the curb in the before picture.

Someone, somewhere (in the Splitt department) must believe that spring is really on the way if the time has come to clear the Splitt off the roads. Or, perhaps, they have simply run out of Splitt and are trying to rebuild their stockpiles before the next great storm moves in!