Back from the freeze - to the snow!

Well - what can I say?  Back from an excellent trip to Central Europe accompanying a school group to several feet of snow to clear.

In my absence, the office was cut off by road and by broadband and telephone; so there's much to catch up on.

During the trip, we visited Berlin for both Reich and Cold War elements, Stalag Luft 3 on the very date of the anniversary of the Great Escape, Auschwitz1 - Birkenau and the Kazimierz quarter of Kraków where some of Schindler's List was filmed. 

In Birkenau, the temperature was several degrees below zero, but the wind seemed to be coming from the steppes with nothing to impede it.  It was physically painful just to be there, but the students fully appreciated how it must have been to endure these conditions wearing no more than a pair of pyjamas.