Der Schnäppchenjäger

In Germany, there used to be a law only allowing shops to have a sale (i.e. a period with lots of goods reduced in price) in January up until the last Monday. The rest of the year, tough, no sales. So the last Monday in January, was traditionally a massive scrum shopping day. It happened yesterday for the last time, since the law has been repealed due to European Union pressure. So the day of the Schnäppchenjäger is no more. That's a shame, because that's a fun word to say. No one knows exactly what will happen now, on the radio this morning they were talking about some shops doing crazy new things like sales every third Tuesday or something. But that sounds pretty unlikely to me. So many shops in Germany are part of Europe-wide chains that they will probably just follow whatever sales their other branches in different countries are doing, and the rest of the shops will fall roughly into line.

Still snowing. Eduardo and I made a snowman at lunchtime. When I built a snowman with Megan on Saturday night, we came back half an hour later to find that some jealous person had thrown it into the fountain. So this time, to deprive him of the pleasure, we threw our snowman into the (frozen) lake ourselves. Pictures tomorrow..