It's still very much win­ter in Blanke­nese with piles of snow every­where and lots of ice float­ing in the Elbe.

Every week­end when there is enough snow there is a ton of peo­ple gath­ered at Schinkels Wiese for the fa­mous Kreek Rüschen: on tra­di­tion­al low wood­en de­vices some dare dev­ils speed down an icy slope with only a big stick to use as rud­der and brake. The oth­er dan­ger­ous thing is that when it has got­ten to dark for Kreek Rüschen they dri­ve home with that big stick stick­ing a cou­ple of me­ters out of the back of their cars.

With the al­most four me­ters dif­fer­ence be­tween the high and low wa­ter mark, al­most four me­ters of float­ing ice ends up on the shore, freez­ing into a gi­ant ice-scape.