We stepped out of the bakery – where the girls had sipped hot chocolate out of teaspoons and crumbled cherry pastries all over the table – into the chill air. For the past two weeks of our European vacation we had been waiting for snow, but nothing. Wasn’t Germany at Christmas all about snow?
The blast of cold air after the heat of the konditerei woke us up. Emily stumbled on the cobblestones, then looked up.
“What’s that, Mama?” she asked as a slow smile spread across her face. “Is that snow I just felt?”
I smiled. Hopefully. All signs of the brooding, bruised sky pointed to it. Moments later the air around us was cascading with white stars, leaping onto our eyelashes, christening the tops of our heads with fairy dust, and icing the gingerbread-like houses all around the walled city of Nordlingen.
The children wanted to taste the snow and Charlotte was surprised to find it tasteless.
“I was sure it would be sweet,” she said.
