In Königstein it is a tie between spring and winter on this first Sunday morning in April.

In the small park by the bus station, a sign advertises the "Spring Christmas Bazaar".

That was already at the end of March: Last weekend, winter clothes were supposed to change hands in the Catholic community center.

Above all, people were queuing at the ice cream parlors in the Taunus towns.

A week later there is snow around the lamppost on which the bazaar sign hangs.

But the lawn is more green than white.

Florentine Fritzen

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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There are small piles of snow in the pedestrian zone in front of Café Kreiner and the optician.

He put plastic lambs in the shop window as decorations.

Except for the baker, the shops are closed, only a few people from Königstein are out and about.

A poster announces: "Easter is just around the corner!" Snow nestles around pansies, daisies and mini daffodils in the Kurpark.

He crunches underfoot at the edges of the paths.

Two car-sharing electric cars with windshields covered in white are parked at City Hall.

But apparently nobody needs a Renault Zoé right now.

Only the birds and the wind can be heard.

Even up in the Falkenstein district, patches of snow glitter in the spring sun, largely unnoticed by human beings.

Just a woman in a bobble hat walks a labrador.

Winter on the Feldberg

But winter reigns on the Feldberg.

And that's why there's a commotion.

All parking spaces on the plateau are occupied, families are unloading sleds.

The slopes are covered in thick snow, the spruces are white, the streets are clear, but not black, but white-grey from snow dust.

The next lower parking lot is just filling up.

The thermometer shows minus four degrees at a quarter to ten.

The cars come from Frankfurt, Offenbach, the Main-Taunus-Kreis and the Limburg-Weilburg district, most of the visitors have small children and sleds with them - and snow pants on their legs.

A man wears mirror glasses.

Couples trudge through powder snow with trekking poles.

It's several centimeters high.

Girls and boys sledding and cheering.

Parents pull sons and daughters on sleds towards the summit.

A man looks on and says enviously to his companion: "You should be a child." A mother doesn't transport her two sons on a wooden sled, but a dozen shapeless snowballs.

One of the boys carefully slides another ball onto the vehicle.

The mother looks at the white freight and prophesies: "We can't make it to the top, it will slide down."

Also in Schmitten, in the valley, the snow is thick on the roofs, meadows and fields of the climatic health resort.

In Niederreifenberg, a man swings the snow shovel in a driveway.

In Dorfweil, the female statue of the memorial to the "heroes from 1914 to 1918" is holding a small pile of snow in her lap.

On the iron fence around the pedestal, Easter decorations shine under a blanket of snow: Plastic eggs in pink, purple, orange and blue dangle from green branches and shine in the sunlight.

Nobody is out and about in town except for a blue-eyed cat.

Icicles hang from the bottom of the cars, and there is a thick layer of white on the trampoline in a garden.

There is more going on in the morning in the place with the most beautiful name in the entire Hochtaunuskreis, namely Weilrod-Rod an der Weil.

It is thawing in the main town of the municipality.

The little river is babbling, a boy has taken a football with him for a Sunday walk – and not a sled.

On the other hand, a hillside at the cemetery is still in the shade.

Tobogganing is still possible there without any problems.

At least that's what the three elementary school students think, who came with a plastic and a wooden sled.

While two of the three keep scrambling up and sliding down the few meters, the third boy watches – and sings: “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way”.