 despairing passenger waits in Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport in west London on Monday. HEAVY snow disrupted the Christmas holiday getaway in Europe, forcing the continent’s biggest airports to close and thousands of stranded passengers to spend the night on terminal floors. In London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Brussels, flights were cancelled and airports warned of backlogs spilling well into the week, with snow and ice frustrating travel plans across Europe before Christmas. Hundreds of passengers had to sleep in terminals after becoming trapped in no man’s land when their flights were diverted from affected airports and they were without a visa to leave transit lounges. (SD-Agencies)  Icicles hang from a roof in Lofer, Austrian province of Salzburg, on Monday.
 Passengers sleep on makeshift beds in Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport in west London on Tuesday.
 A performer dressed as a bear entertains Eurostar passengers queueing for trains at St Pancras station in London on Tuesday. The weather forced Eurostar to impose speed limits. Passengers formed a slow-moving line that stretched for hundreds of meters around the block outside St Pancras station.
 Few customers are seen at a Christmas market in Berlin on Tuesday due to days of heavy snowfall. SD-Agencies
 Airport employees set up camp beds for passengers at the Charles de Gaulle-Roissy airport, outside Paris, after some 40 percent of flights were cancelled Monday.
 A woman cleans the area in front of her house in Berlin on Monday.
| 