Snow chaos in Europe

Xmas 2006 in Sweden, probably "peanuts" compared to now!

I feel so relieved over the fact that I’m not heading home this winter. When I read about the snow chaos in the papers it makes me shiver. I feel for all those people that are stuck at Heathrow as a result of inefficiency and pure stupidity –how can the company being in charge of maintaining the airport (BAA) turn down an offer of help from the military?! Pure idiotic behaviour! London is still in Europe and even though a massive amount of snow at this time of the year isn’t as usual over there as it might be in Scandinavia, it still shouldn’t come as such a surprise. And more importantly: travellers shouldn’t be stuck at the airport as a result of a pure “catch-22” situation.

I’m just thinking about how China acted in 2008 when it suddenly started snowing and simply didn’t stop. Sure, the train traffic was horrendous, but in a big city like Shanghai the local government managed to solve the problem despite not being equipped with snowploughs. People got rid of the snow manually as thousands of volunteers and military soldiers went out to shove snow away from the bridges, airports and roads. A little bit more of that and a little bit less of management meetings would do Heathrow good.

In Sweden (especially in the south where I am from) where the snow is more than overwhelming, the trains and are having difficulties (a lot of delays) and some of the main roads are being closed due to the heavy snowfall, but at least the planes are still being able to take off/land. I feel for my parents that are more or less “snowed in,” and although I feel relieved that I don’t have to get out and battle the weather by trying to fly home, of course I miss them terribly, especially at this time of the year. This is going to be a long, white, winter...