Nobody has mentioned the weather, so the Duty Met, man had better deal with it.
The weather was indeed different, much more text-book Continental, especially so the further East one was based.
Every year, Met. RAF Bruggen ran a sweepstake for the first date with snow at a British observing site. The sweep was always won in November ...... try that in the UK these days.
Guetersloh and Detmold [pongoes] had genuine freezing rain most winters, real evil stuff that coated all surfaces with mirror-smooth ice within minutes. Such it was that cars had an external set of windows, made of ice, and steering was a lottery.
Summers regularly reached the mid 30s C for a week or so, and the heat was quite distressing as air-con was a rarity.
And forecasting was just as difficult. Woe betide a missed snowfall, with airfields black and WingCo Ops looking even blacker.