Moest wel wat moed verzamelen om bij de voorspelde gevoelstemperatuur van -15°C toch op de fiets naar Pilates te gaan. Het was nu wel erg verleidelijk om fijn op de bank te blijven hangen, met de restjes van mijn chocoladeletter. Gelukkig had ik nog een en ander liggen aan dikkere handschoenen en een extra dikke sjaal, die mijn oma ooit breide, toen mijn moeder in haar jonger jaren perse met een toen modieuze cape wilde flaneren, dus ik heb me er dapper doorheen geslagen. Brr!
We leave for Riga on friday. I'm still trying to decide what to pack and which coat to wear. Wikipedia mentions February can mean -20°C but I doubt that'll happen during our visit. Its now -2°C, but according to the 5 Day Forecast from the BBC Weather Centre, they're expecting lower temperatures and possibly even snow. I have heard though that the wind chill is much lower than it can be here. Must be the difference in maritime and continental land climate according to the Köppen climate classification (do they still teach this in schools?). I think I'll take my medium thick coat.
It's snowing!
This must be the strangest winter in ages. I'm still waiting for it to get started and all of nature appears to be in spring mode already. It's my birthday in ten days, and I remember last year, it was snowing around that time.
This reminds me, documentary An Inconvenient Truth is showing for free the coming weeks, in Trianon among others. I still haven't gotten round to watching it, so I might give the free viewing a go.
Another big storm is passing over the country today. Absolute chaos at the moment.
Went to Utrecht by train to go to the Webwinkel Vakdagen, a trade fair for e-commerce websites. We decided however to leave around lunchtime, to be home ahead of the storm. It started well enough, but halfway home things started falling apart. A train, a lightrail and a very long busride got us home after a little over three and a half hours. It usually takes a little more than half an hour to get to Leiden from Utrecht. But we turned out to be the lucky ones, as I later found out loads of people were stranded and had to sleep over at the trainstation.
Here are a few links for you enjoyment: photo's, BBC News Huge storms sweep northern Europe and Kyrill (storm) on Wikipedia.
A little late for a white Christmas, but at the moment it's snowing!
They (those responsable for that type of thing) have even issued a weather alarm, urging people not the head out if it's not necessary. That's okay, I'm not going anywhere untill tomorrow afternoon.
Watched The end of the world as we know it, an interesting documentary by Marcel Theroux. About how it might be to late to switch to green methods of generating energy and how we might have to resort to nuclear power. He visited the Chernobyl site to see what has happened there the last two decades.
On a related note, I just found an article entitled Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age, via Slashdot. The discussion, though not without it's usual fair share of ignorant remarks, resulted in a bunch of interesting links: