It's warmer but the "Kalte Krieg" is still raging

It snowed heavily for an afternoon yesterday. Here is a picture showing the snow outside our flat.

Then it stopped in the evening, and came the sleet. My German colleagues keep telling me that Karlsruhe is the second warmest city in Germany (Freiburg im Breisgau is the warmest) and that snow rarely sticks to the ground for longer than a day...

By this morning, the temperature has risen substantially. It is still hovering around the freezing point, but Glenda doesn't think it's bone-chilling anymore. It may still take some time before the snow that has accumulated on the ground to melt (or get washed away by the rain when it eventually comes).

The "cold war" is still raging. Germany has yet to receive any natural gas from Russia, and Slovakia is about to re-start its nuclear plants, which were shut down as a condition to join EU in 2004.