Winter’s here. Autumn didn’t last for long, that’s for sure.
Snowfalls hit the country last Friday, along with lots of ice on the roads, and completely buggered the east of the country. The A1 and A50 were especially hard hit. People were stranded in their cars and had to be rescued or given blankets, food and fuel by the army. Evening rush hour turned into a nightmare with over 800 km of traffic jams across the country. The A2 alone had an 88km jam, stretching all the way from Utrecht to Eindhoven. The traffic didn’t clear up until around 05:30 Saturday morning. Many people had to be given emergency shelter in Apeldoorn.
The south was hit by gale force winds (gusts of force 12 were registered!) and power cables came down. Thousands of people were left without electricity.
Trains were paralysed, as switches malfunctioned and lightning struck. Again, many people found themselves unable to make it home Friday night. In Amsterdam, a couple of people were struck by lightning near the docks.
The weather in Amsterdam hasn’t been too bad. It rained like the end of the world on Friday, but Saturday and Sunday were OK. I’m hoping it will behave itself tomorrow night, too, as Sarah, Eloïse and I board the CityNightLine to Zürich to see our friends, Roman and Carine (and baby Elina).
It turns out that Google’s Zürich office will be holding its Christmas party on Tuesday, so we’ll probably all pop in for that. Funny; I thought I’d attended my last Google Christmas party last December in Mountain View. I wasn’t expecting to find myself this year in the same location as the Christmas party of one of the remote offices. That’ll be fun.
We’ll stay in Switzerland until next Sunday, when we’ll once again return home on the night-train. When we get back, there’ll be less than two weeks until the new house becomes ours. I can’t believe how quickly the time is passing.