Winter was a little late in coming in 2012/13, but it did finally manifest itself. We didn’t get the kind of winter we had in 2010/11 though. When I first arrived in Hamburg in November 2010 – I think it was round about the 19th – it started snowing in Hamburg. The snow would stay on the ground, accompanied by freezing temperatures, until the end of March.
The snow we had in February of 2013 was relatively short lived, for which Gatti was thankful (she hates snow and ice!) – although it did hang around until the middle of March.
The end of winter always seems to herald some kind of change in the Gattner-Wells household, and 2013 was no exception. Gatti decided to swap her bog-standard mobile phone for a smartphone.
The iPhone had been around since 2007, and the first Android smartphones had appeared the following year, so I suppose it was time to jump on the bandwagon, although I stubbornly decided to stick with my old mobile phone for the time being.
That first smartphone was an HTC Desire X, and we took out a two-year flat-rate contract which meant we got the phone for free.