Long before it really started to snow, people started to be in panic ! And it's true, the media really made a big catastrophe out of the few snowflakes we finally got.
We reached about 3 cm in the Brussels' area and it snowed about 24 h ! Today's view out of my window to the left.
The Belgians have a lot of humor, I found this yesterday on Facebook ! It was shared I don't know how many times.
In fact nobody was hurt, only the traffic was a mess and the public transport which in normal times is rather bad, was even worse during this dramatic time !
After days of announcing snow and the catastrophes we could expect it started snowing finally on Monday !
The front view of our house at noon and the next morning the same with the view on our garden.
I had no desire to go out and preferred to stay home and work on my computer and at the same time like a maintenance women of a building, watching the street ! Besides some dog walkers I didn't see anything interesting, nobody fell or slided.
It doesn't disturb me to drive in snow even when the streets are not cleaned, but when I arrived at my aqua gym, we were only 6 people instead of 12 the others had preferred to stay home. I have to say that Belgium is not used to snow so it's always a mess on the streets because they have not enough equipments to cover the all streets. The building where we have our gym looked beautiful in the snow.
The new bathing suit I had bought last week was a bit narrow, and as I am in my "sweet phase", which means that I eat more chocolats, I thought maybe I have put on weight. I stepped on my balance, and the balance was kind to me, I only had one kg more, and that is still in my tolerance zone, my alarm starts to ring when I have difficulties with closing my jeans. Normally I never use the balance only when the alarm is ringing.
We met at Myriam's for our scrabble, I don't know what happened, maybe it was the snow, but we were all very distracted and laughed and chatted more then thinking about a word. The result was that the game lasted over our coffee time so we stopped counted our points, I was third that sounds better then nearly the last one.
As it is below 0° C I took the opportunity and defrosted our freezer. The few things which were still inside I put in a plastic bag and in our garden. Now it's done and I wait that the little light becomes green and I can put back the food I had put in the garden. I also have to fill it in again, so I have to shop this afternoon.
Our freezer is an old thing, but still working, the new once of course defrost themselves !
The weatherman said that it won't snow again, but the cold weather remains, which makes me think that perhaps a snow storm is arriving ! They get it always or mostly wrong !
more participants at Susanne at Living to tell the Story.
I had never heard the word zoomie and my dictionary didn't know it either. A word which apparently didn't exist ! And even Google translate was very clear ! Zoomie meant zoomie in German and French, and that was it.
As usual when I don't know a thing, I google ! There I found two definitions. 1. (military, slang) A graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, and Cat zoomies. As I am allergic to all military things the second definition was the best ever !
As a servant to three cats and a cat lover in general I didn't know that when my cats are running around like pursued by the devil, jumping over armchairs, sofas, tables that I thought I have flying cats, then running around the living room and the kitchen, jumping in the air and then collapse for a nap somewhere !
When Rosie starts with her zoomies she gets a glint in her eyes, wiggle waggle her bottom and then start rapidly moving about, while meowing loudly but in a strange way.
Meanwhile we are used to it and find it rather funny to see our cat (one at time) flying through the room with a mad look on her or his face !
Rosie starts with an evil glance in her eyes
Arthur looks like an angel, before he starts running around and jumping into strange places or playing with the carpets.
Only 19 year old Kim does zoomies probably in her dreams. She spends 24 h in the bathroom with short interruptions !
First thing in the morning I heard from everybody, Television, newspapern, messages, Whatsapps etc was : It will be snowing !! Can we go out ? A disaster. And then I read that we will have 2 to 3 cm in our region (0.79 - 1.18") of course that is a lot ! When I think that in the South of Germany, Austria, Switzerland etc they had or have up to 5 m (26ft) !
Poor people start to panic ! Really ! They told me that they won't drive or go out ! By the time the snow falls and cars are driving over it's already gone !
While I am typing this, it really started to snow ! It's very seldom I have to say once it didn't snow for 7 years. Last year we had maybe 2 or 3 days. The two pictures above were taken in 2013 !!
So think of me, if ever I am not writing a post for tomorrow I got stuck in the snow !
Belgian News 22 January 2018
SNOW: what time will your region be affected?
The snow falls on the country this Tuesday. it can have a white coat up to 2 to 5 cm high. The snow front will move from west to east. It began with the coast and moved on the region of the center and Brussels, before arriving in the provinces of Namur, Liège and Luxembourg.
I never thought that one day I would step into a painting and on top the paintings of my favorite painter van Gogh. I became completely immersed in the work before me, making reality around me fade into the new world created by the artist.
Thanks to the most recent virtual projection technology I became a part of the spectacular, incomparable universe of Vincent Van Gogh. I discovered the life of the artist in a new way: his time at the convent and in Arles, the secrets from the letters he wrote to his brother and much more. I was surrounded by a unique sound and light show, that immersed me in the world of to me familiar images of Vincent Van Gogh.
Together with 4 friends we went to "La Bourse" the ancient stock market building in Brussels, which had been transformed into an Art Exhibition location and where this multimedia exhibition : "Van Gogh - The Immersive Experience" took place. We all were very curious what this title really meant and what we would see !
"La Bourse" the old stock market building
We immediately were in van Gogh's little room in Arles.
Different paintings floated by
On the walls of this old building you could see the different paintings
One of his famous sunflowers was standing there
In the middle of the huge hall, were deckchairs and chairs in no special order. A large carpet lay on the floor in front of one wall, where young people laid down and soaked in the impressions.
For 2 € you could rent a special headset with which you really entered van Gogh's world. I forgot that I sat on a chair, but at the beginning I clinged to my chair, because I thought I would take off ! And then I saw the yellow fields the black birds, the farmers, cows, the sea and everything which he had seen when he lived there. It was just overwhelming ! Two of my friends had to take their headsets off, they felt sick. I forgot everything and dived in van Gogh's world.
After this unique experience we sat for a while on the deckchairs and continued to see the different living paintings on the wall.
His self portraits, except the first which was a photography showed him in different stages of his life.
I was very impressed and it took me a while to come back to the present.
I was happy that I had followed my curiosity.
Just besides "La Bourse" is a typical Brussels Brasserie,The Fallstaff where we had a beer before we returned home.
This exhibition had so much success that it had been prolonged until the end of t
he month !
When I was a little girl, wherever my friends and I could detect an echo of our voices, we shouted as loud as we could one after the other and laughed when our voice came back. Of course we used the ugliest words and giggled when we heard ourselves. In fact we made a kind of voice selfie.
Later when I was older and went on holidays into the mountains in some places you had a wonderful echo ! You said a sentence and it came back, you sang a little song and you could hear your voice it was as if the mountain was talking to you.
Lake of Garda (our apartment)
During one part of my life I was really scared about echos. That was when we went each year on holidays to Italy at the lake of Garda where Mr. G is coming from combining family visits and holidays at the lake. . The north of the lake is surrounded by high mountains, which look really very beautiful, but ... in some years we had a lot of thunderstorms, which probably weren't that noisy, but the echo from the mountains doubled the effect and it was terrifying ! Normally I am not afraid of thunder but with several echos as amplifiers, it was really awful ! The noise could have woke up a dead ! Sometimes I thought the walls were shaking.
But as for everything from year to year I got nearly used to it and it didn't scare me that much anymore. There was nothing to do against it anyway.
For today's "Just Jot it" Jil has given us the word "Serendipity", to knit a story around this word.
I was never good in knitting wool but knitting around a word I have never heard, seemed quite difficult to me. What did I do as I always do when I don't know something : I google !
Google brought me to Wikipedia who stated that Serendipity means an unplanned fortunate discovery, like for example the penicillin in 1928 or the microwave oven in 1945 !!
Unfortunately I haven't discovered nothing besides some unexpected dust under my bed. But I don't think that this is a fortunate discovery. The word was invented by a certain Horace Walpole in 1754 in the English language. I think he was a rather complicated man, why invent such a strange word coming from Arab traders or the Three Princes of Serendip, instead of just saying "luck" or "fortunate". That's much shorter.
When you dig a little deeper into the meaning of this word, you could get a bit confused, at least I did,
- The Serendipity of Science
- The BBC serendipity webside
