Nevermind - It's Only about the Snowy Days

The late night of March 1st 2005 brought snow all over the Lowlands while we were sleeping. The morning of Wednesday March 2nd was decked with thick cold, white blanket of snow; it found us awed by its appearance. It was actually rather pleasant: real snow and no wind. Children walked or rode or cycled happily to school with their parents. And, as on Wednesdays they have only half-day of school, they had plenty time the rest of the day to build snowmen and igloo and to have snowball fights in the street.
The marketplace in our neighborhood, Albert Cuyp, wasn't very active this day. The row of white kiosk tents looked like an incomplete row of teeth, since several kiosks didn't show up. The snow in the busy parts of the street was dirtied easily, leaving lumps of brownish, muddy snow.

I and my mother (she's staying with us for a couple of weeks) picked up Dhanu from school at about 12:30. We walked homewards, but dropping by De Soepwinkel on the way home for lunch. We ordered 1 Beginner's Menu of Oriental Beef Noodle Soup + white bread + quiche with mozarella-pesto-tomato topping + tea, 1 Beginner's Menu of Toscana Lentil Soup + brown bread + chocolate cake + fresh orange juice, one toast with mozarella-pesto-tomato filling and one apple juice. You can always count on De Soepwinkel for tasty, healthy meals. After lunch we dropped by at the nearest supermarket (Albert Heijn Stadhouderskade) to get some bread and eggs before going home. The snow didn't stop falling, in small, small flakes and the sky stayed grayish-white.

Looking down from our front window at our apartment (we lived on the 2nd floor - counting the ground floor as "ground" floor, not the 1st floor), we could see neighborhood kids playing in the snow with their parents. A big igloo was built right in front of our door. A group of construction workers left a prototypical snowman on our street: it wore muts (wool cap) and had worker's gloves as its hands, it has chips' paper cone as its nose and a 'scarf' made of construction-line ribbon (red-white stripes).

Approaching evening, the snow hasn't stopped falling. Sybrand and Lindri came home at around six. Then Ayu and Rizal came just in time for dinner (fried rice with shrimps and chicken and peas + pindang eggs + dessert: banana fritters + Ben & Jerry's Full Vermonty). After long, pleasant talks and laughters and countless cups of tea, Ayu and Rizal left. It's dark outside but the snow reflected all the lights, creating a yellowish bright color everywhere.

The morning of March 3rd was still snowing, and even more. I had to make my weekly trip to Delft. The 09.10 train I usually take was 30 minutes late, and even more. An announcement said that the train would not leave until undefinable hour, due to lack of personnel. Huh?! I thought it didn't matter as long as there are enough co-/machinist. Anyway, then they just took some cars from the train, so we could finally leave. All in all, I arrived at school at about 11.30 - an hour later than I usually do.

OK - it's almost 15.30 now and I'll have to go to my professor's office for our meeting. I'll add photo's later (thanks to my mother's digital camera).
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Back home; it's 22:57 now. I'm done uploading the photos: the empty Albert Cuyp market, a street corner of our neighborhood and a pile of snow on a tree behind our apartment.

Right. I'll have to pack up and get ready to go to Hamburg tomorrow. I hate to think tonight is predicted to be freezing (-15 C?!) and that it might be colder tomorrow. Oh but I'll be fine as long as our train trip to Hamburg go smooth despite the weather. Good night.