I woke up yesterday to a good few inches of snow. It is beautifully distracting. And very very cold. After a week of wearing an inappropriately small amount of clothes for the season I am taking my mothers advice and wearing a ridiculous amount of layers. I may look like the michelin man every time I go outside but at least I am warm.
I can also highly recommend taking your slippers to work with you.
Walking to work yesterday I noticed that the pavement was rather stripy – parts of the path had been completely cleared of snow while other parts were still icy and mushy.
How nice some Belgians are, I thought, to get up early to sweep the path for me, their neighbour.
Uh huh. Except then my boss informed me that actually you are legally responsible for the path in front of your house. So if someone falls and breaks their leg and you hadn’t cleared it, you could be sued. So much for loving thy neighbour!
Today the snow is still here, unmelted. Which is something of a wonder to me. Apparently one colleague of mine on the other side of Brussels actually skied to work. Amazing.
It is a special day. Not least because I am actually, finally, at last, amazingly starting French lessons tonight (I’ve paid for the month so there’s no turning back). But it is also epiphany, or three kings day as they call it in Belgium. Here they celebrate by eating cake and wearing crowns. Any celebration that includes those two things cannot be bad…
