I've always loved that heaven/hell quote. And agree with it though I only know one Italian and he is an extremely good cook. Well, he ought to be, he runs a restaurant.
My car is not suited to driving in snow. The ground clearance is about 6cm, the tyres are far too wide and the engine power is far too high - this device is better suited to good roads. Good roads are something we could use more of - or at least a lot of salt and sand on the roads. Instead, we got snow and more snow. Then some more snow. then a lot more snow.
8 hours after this was taken there was 20cm more snow on it.
When I go to collect the car, I'll take a bus - not operated by the First Group - to Glasgow and a bus (Again not operated by the First Group) from there to Airdrie, then walk to the village once there is a lot less snow. If I can't find a non First Group bus or train from Glasgow to Airdrie, I'll walk the 25km if I have to. First Group will never get another cent from me.
The snow was melting where the car is abandoned today but it will have refrozen tonight.
Meanwhile, I have borrowed my mother's car which is much smaller, has narrow tyres and a lot less power. It is a lot better suited to driving in deep snow.
The roads were closed at three places on the route I'd have had to take had I been able to get the car out of the village it is in - that would have involved about 6 hours' work with shovels and 4 people pushing the car till I could get the tyres to grip.
As for Europe being like a Swiss watch. The bits of it I have lived in aren't. The banlieux around Paris are probably almost as bad as the favelas. There are parts of every city I know about in Europe where it is not safe to go. I've spent a lot of time in a part of Madrid where you dare not go outdoors after dark.
Ask about Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. The worst airport in the world in my experience. Europe does have its problems - many things do work well but a lot of things don't. The second worst airport is Bulawayo in Zimbabwe which has almost certainly got worse since I was last in it in 1985. Almost equal to it was Jan Smuts airport in Johannesburg in South Africa which has probably improved since 1985. All three are best avoided. Even if I have to pay a lot more, I will never go to Charles de Gaulle airport again.
Everywhere in the world has its good bits and its bad bits. The trains in Holland have the best coffee anywhere. But it is extremely expensive. The coffee in British trains is expensive and awful. But talking about coffee to a Brazilian........
For reference, my favourite airport anywhere is the one in Madrid. Not that I like airports but Madrid is the best one I've experienced anywhere. And I don't speak Spanish and almost nobody there speaks English. Almost the only Spanish phrase I know is "Habla Ingles?"
Some very valuable knowledge about snow and traveling has been posted here. I hope you can get to your car soon enough.
Nespresso is aggressively marketing it's coffee here. I like it, but I prefer the inconstancy of the local coffee. It's not always excellent but sometimes you hit jackpot....
I think the best coffee is available everywhere in the world (we have lots of imported brands here). You no longer need to come here just for that. But there will be a World Cup and Olympic games...
Yesterday was windy. We have new wind speed record 172Km/h
Somewhere the wind push out the water from lake Balaton. (Waves)
In the west part snowing, east part of the country raining.
Some place the rain is too much, flooding problems....in the eastside of the country
We in west, cold, windy and snowing
But, we are a small country. The weather is a little crazy
Yesterday weather "live" on idokep.hu with some pictures, (my favorite weather forcast page) with Google Translate.
//// idokep.eu live Central Europe weather forcast. Local (country) idokep.hu ////
Not by local standards. Where the car is abandoned, it is very unusual for the time of year. It is not unusual in bad years in February/March. I'd have thought this wasn't a lot of snow by Canadian standards.
Fortunately the white stuff is melting rapidly here - but not where I dumped the car. I had hoped to collect it this weekend, but no chance of that happening now.
Where I had hoped to be at the end of the month has several metres of snow on it. I'm not even about to try to get a car to my long range light testing area.
Guess I'll be driving a bus to get folks to work here instead. (For the last 20 years I've provided a bus to get folks to where I work on the days that public transport doesn't)
A guy called John Martin. The band was called The Dawntreaders. The song is called "I could eat you whole" which seemed appropriate. I went to see his current band playing on Friday night which was fun.
John and I were at college together and he worked for me for around four years till he went and got a real job. He's currently a deputy headmaster of a school in Aberdeenshire.
His wife will never forget the first time she met me.
Collecting the car turns out to have been a bad idea - it now needs a new head gasket. Arrived here on the back of a lorry at 2:10am - 7 hours after I set out.
After quite some time, finally we have snow too. Nothing fancy a few cm at best but snow it is. It will be gone till morning i guess. XD
In the first week of december we registered still around 16 celsius. Now near 0 with -4 or -6 at night which is quite chilly by our usual temps. Still we lack proper winter gear more often than not.
Last year we had almost never got under 7 degrees daytime through entire december. Trend continued till end of february with a chilly 0 a few days. March went up considerably to 10 degrees and steadily up to end of april where temps were running up to 22. We usually have 8 months a year suitable for motorbike riding. For some even more. I saw one going around a good week ago when temperatures were around 8-10 celsius.
Round here the rainy season usually starts in March after the snow melts and continues till January when the snow begins. It is very unusual for us to have a lot of snow (or any) in November, let alone for it to hang around for three weeks. The last of it had just melted when another 20cm of it landed in my back garden. I've driven motorbikes on every day of the year here - from 1984-1990 my only transport was a motorbike (But 1984-86 I lived on the fringes of the Kalahari Desert which was a bit warmer).
I tried commuting to the hospital from the long-distance test range (Which is on the most often and longest blocked by snow road in the UK), a distance of about 85km each way on the bike in winter 1989. I lasted a week before moving back into town.
One well-known local author (Stuart MacBride) says the rainy season in Aberdeen begins on January 1st and ends on December 31st. This is reasonably accurate.
However, we don't get the extremes of temperature that the mainland of Europe does - the highest ever is 29.8oC and the lowest ever -18oC. The day I finally managed to get back from the frozen south, it was -16 when I got home. Three weeks ago it stayed below -10 for several days - this is very unusual. I don't ever remember it being as warm as 29.8 and I've lived here mostly since 1964. In fact I can't remember it hitting 25 for any length of time.
There is about 20cm of snow out the back just now - I'm not going to worry about it till I can't see the assistant in it. The top of her head is just over a metre from the ground. This is unlikely to happen as I've never seen that much snow here.
