BERLIN - Forget flying around Europe on Thursday. Ditch driving as well, and think twice about taking the train.
Freezing temperatures and often blinding snowfall shuttered airports across Britain on Thursday, delayed flights across Europe and forced passengers in Germany to spend the night in parked trains.
Gatwick Airport, one of Britain's busiest, was closed for a second straight day, cancelling another 600 flights as conditions continued to deteriorate. Edinburgh Airport and London's City Airport were also closed for the morning, according to the Eurocontrol central control agency.
The agency also reported delays at Paris' Charles de Gaulle, Berlin's Tegel and Duesseldorf airports.
Travelers hoping to fare better by road or rail were equally stymied as snow continued to fall across the U.K. and most of Germany, leaving thousands of motorists stranded overnight.
Some 3,000 rail passengers were also stranded overnight and struggled to catch a few minutes' sleep in their trains, German railway operator Deutsche Bahn said.
Some 200 stranded passengers in Germany's Frankfurt hub spent the night in parked night trains after hotels filled up. Nothing was moving along many of the nation's high speed train links, such as between Nuremberg and Leipzig in the south and east, or between Hamburg and the Danish capital Copenhagen in the north.
Heavy snowfall in Poland also disrupted the normal flow of planes and trains and created a treacherous situation on many of the country's already abysmal roads.
Thousands of homes in Poland were also left without electricity or heat as temperatures hovered around -10 Celsius. Several Romanian villages suffered a similar fate, while severe ice caused delays to traffic across the nation.
In Geneva, the airport was able to reopen after removing 2,000 tractor-trailers full of snow from the airfield.
