In the morning there was more snow than expected already, but transportation was still — somewhat — possible. However, it snowed a lot during the ample hour — just a few minutes slower than usual —  it took me to get from my home village Veenwouden — actually Feanwâlden, since the Frisian names have been made the official ones in our municipality at the beginning of this year — to the city of Leeuwarden, which is where my school is, and when I arrived at school I was one of the few people that had made it. Inside there was tea and coffee and outside students were throwing snowballs at each other.

It quickly became clear that it was not doable to give lessons and therefore the day was cancelled. A lot of the buses didn’t show up, or were very slow and the trains had delays as well — later on the day the public transport would be almost completely stalled — but a few friends and I were able to catch a train back home. I left my bike at school, where it will have to stay for the Christmas Holidays because today has been cancelled as well; the Christmas breakfast, the Christmas Service and the Christmas ball.

The morning rush hour was one of the five worst rush hours ever, with more than 670 kilometres of traffic jam in a country with 16-17 million inhabitants, 116.500 km of road and an area of 41.528 km² — 18% of that is water. Many people decided not to show up at work, take a day off or go home early.

This house is For Sale!