Can Germany still do winter?
Cold spell reveals deep flaws in country's infrastructure + Merz in India + saving Greenland
Dear Reader,
For anyone living in Germany, there has been little doubt in recent days that winter has arrived in earnest. A severe cold snap driven by the winter storm “Elli” swept across the country late last week, bringing snow and ice and pushing temperatures well into the double-digit negatives.
These days, such prolonged Arctic blasts are increasingly rare. Still, the almost inevitable disruption that followed led to questions about whether Germany’s rundown infrastructure is resilient enough to face a few snow flakes.
Deutsche Bahn (DB) suspended several long-distance routes in northern and central Germany, while trains that did run were subject to speed restrictions due to ice on the tracks — triggering delays, missed connections and widespread frustration.
“In my childhood, we called that winter,” one stranded passenger noted dryly in conversation with Web.de.
Even Berlin, spared the worst of the cold, saw significant disruption on the S-Bahn network, which is operated by DB. Beyond rail problems, schools and nurseries shut their doors across multiple regions, sometimes even after snowfall had stopped entirely, while airports cancelled or delayed dozens of flights. Small talk in the capital centred around complaints that pavements has been left inadequately gestreut (salted or sanded).
As of Tuesday, with temperatures creeping back into the single digits, the disarray had still not fully subsided: rail passengers continued to face delays, and Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, kept many schools closed amid persistent black ice warnings.
What’s the reaction been?
Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder (CDU) acknowledged the “challenging weather situation” but pressed DB to review its response, saying there had been “too many train cancellations and delays” and that lessons must be learned for next winter.
CDU MP Christoph Ploß was blunter, calling the situation a “disaster” and warning that DB must act immediately “to ensure that the entire train network does not come to a standstill when winter returns.”
“It is unacceptable that trains barely run for days on end when winter weather hits Germany,” he told the Rheinische Post, adding that “other European countries manage better when it snows or when it’s cold.”
The real problem, argued Green Party rail expert Matthias Gastel, lay not in the cold but in chronic under-funding and worn-out infrastructure.
Many newer trains are “less winter-proof than those of earlier generations,” Gastel said, noting that modernisation has sometimes come at the expense of robustness — though that still does not explain staff shortages or frozen switches.
DB CEO Evelyn Palla defended the company’s handling of the storm, saying repeated snowdrifts blocked tracks that had already been cleared. “Passenger and staff safety has always been our top priority,” she said. “Our preparation was as good as possible, even if each weather event brings unexpected challenges. And no train was left stranded on an open track.”
What comes next?
Even during good weather, DB has long struggled with chronic delays and tight resources. This winter didn’t create those weaknesses: it exposed them. According to Spiegel Online, DB today operates only around 70 snowploughs, compared with roughly 110 acquired by the former East German Deutsche Reichsbahn in the 1970s, leaving far less capacity to keep tracks clear during prolonged snowfall.
That shortfall may now force a reckoning. Under its new boss Palla, Deutsche Bahn has already launched a sweeping internal reform programme running through 2027, aimed at upgrading infrastructure, modernising maintenance and improving operational planning. Reducing weather-related failures is a central pillar — and the recent cold snap has provided planners with a real-world stress test of what happens when January hits hard.
Politicians are also discussing billions in extra investment for the long-neglected rail network. Some of this funding is now even framed as strategically important for defence, making a portion of the rail budget federally financed through defence allocations.
Palla has also signalled that regional managers could gain greater access to Germany’s €500 billion special infrastructure fund — a pot of money critics often say exists on paper but is being deployed too slowly — to tackle some of the network’s most neglected bottlenecks.
Rachel’s take
Given how spoilt we are with modern technologies, today’s winter weather really shouldn’t pose the challenge it does.
My German grandmother-in-law recently recalled the harsh Berlin winters of her childhood. Looking back on the post-war years of 1946 and ’47, she described life without central heating, with single-glazed windows, and the daily task of hauling coal to survive temperatures of minus 20 degrees.
By contrast, she described Sunday’s temperatures of minus seven — compacted with snow and ice — as “what a winter should be”, even as I stared out of the window with mounting dread.
Her point was simple: previous generations endured harsher conditions with far fewer resources — and with minimal complaints.
When trains are delayed or cancelled today, the problem lies less with the cold itself than with ageing infrastructure, overstretched staff, tight operational margins and decades of under-investment. With better preparation — from genuinely winter-proofed trains and improved switch heaters to finally funding enough staff — Germany should be able to handle snow and ice without bringing daily life to a standstill. As many have noted, both other countries and earlier generations managed similar conditions — and kept moving.
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News in Brief
🇮🇳 German diplomacy continued across the globe: on Monday, Chancellor Merz paid his first visit to India, where he received a warm welcome from Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his home city of Ahmedabad. Over two days, the two countries signed a suite of strategic agreements — spanning defence, technology, rare minerals, trade and green energy — underscoring a rapidly deepening partnership. A key highlight was progress toward an ambitious defence collaboration, including a potential submarine partnership with German giant Thyssenkrupp. Merz also spotlighted hopes for a near-term EU–India free trade deal, pushing Germany’s economic ties beyond reliance on China.
📜 A satirical poem published by the in-house magazine of Germany’s Foreign Ministry has caused a scandal after its author, a diplomat, ripped into former foreign minister Annalena Baerbock. The poem described Baerbock as “travelling the world with glorious make-up/ her hair sitting perfectly/ her speeches lofty and lacking in substance.” It also accused her of “scrounging a job in the Big Apple — how elegant.” Baerbock (Greens) was Germany’s first female foreign minister when she served under Olaf Scholz from 2021 to 2025. Praised internationally for her strong support for Ukraine, she faced media criticism for using state funds to employ a stylist on an annual salary of €130,000. After her party performed poorly in the 2025 election, she took a job at the UN General Assembly despite the position having already been promised to a career diplomat. The publication of the poem triggered a series of complaints, with the ministry’s equal opportunities officers describing it as an “infamous defamation” that deployed “misogynist narratives”. The poem was removed from the magazine’s online edition, and the ministry has promised to conduct an internal inquiry into how it came to be published.
🇺🇸 In an attempt to save US-German relations (and perhaps the world order), German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) hopped on a plane to Washington to meet his counterpart, Marco Rubio, on Monday. He might have had some success: following the talks, Wadephul said there was no indication that the US planned military action and — as Germany had already stressed in a joint EU statement — that decisions about Greenland’s future needed to be made by Greenland and Denmark. Wadephul also reiterated Germany’s interest in a strengthened NATO role in the Arctic and in cooperation with the US on broader security issues.
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