The joy of winter

Good morning?

No, read further...

This morning started with -18C and when the sun finally came up around 9:30 (exact time 18 Dec in Helsinki 9:23) the day became beautiful.

Today I had to go out from the office and I noticed that I have driven the "new" car for almost 3 weeks and only today noticed that I don't have sunglasses in the car. No wonder, since I said quite long time ago that next time I will be leaving the office at daylight, it will be February-March or so... Pitch black again when I left around 5 pm.

Today was the last day of fall term in our kids' old school in Brussels. Or was supposed to be but they decided to close the school since the whole of Brussels was in chaos.They got about 15 cm of snow and all hell breaks loose. Biggest part of the problem is that the Belge are not equipped to handle the situation but are still so hard headed that they head to the traffic and think they can manage it with the slick tires in their cars.

Few years back the winter lasted for half a day but that morning was pretty funny. On our way to the school I was having fun with the proper winter tires under my PanzerWagen, but again the Belge were in a wrong place at a wrong time. In the middle of one hill there was a car sideways blocking the road both ways. After waiting for a while in a queue S goes and asks what's going on and the typical Belge reply is "we are waiting for the salt truck to come".

Well, someone coming from the Nordic would have pushed the car aside but not the Belge. This reminds me of a joke my dear cousin from Vermont sent about slippery roads. Gotta find it and share it with you..

The first winter we were in Brussels, the phone rang one morning at around 0630 and it was one of the moms who passed on the message that the school was closed "because of the snow". Well, that enables us to sleep longer but still you gotta go and take a look how much snow there is. 2 cm, max an inch!

Gotta say it was hilarious for us but the kids were happy. That will never happen in Finland, no matter if it is -30C for 2 weeks (which happened when we had our highschool graduation exams).

Back to presense.

Luckily the sun only goes down around 3:30 (exact time 18 Dec in Helsinki 3:14) in the afternoon. However, as you can see form the picture taken today 2:30 early afternoon it is no wonder why we Finns are what we are ;o)

Fomral length of the day 5 hours 50 minutes.

Just wait until we get up to Lapland where the sun does not get up at all in about 6 weeks!!!