Since snowstorm has covered the Netherlands in this mystical cold white stuff that comes from the sky, Almere is covered in snow and it is beautiful. In the last days we had plenty of sunshine, so I could catch one or two nice shots during my lunch break or on a evening walk.

In comparison to last year, we have now a proper winter, let it be for a week only. One could even say that for a day or two we have been snowed in (somehow). The roads have been in a horrible state, which means you are practically stuck at home. No trains were going for two days, even the buses were stopped. I went shopping with snow chains on our car - not that I mind though :-)

# Photos

The state of the roads was really like this for the whole week already. Main roads are cleaned, and the highways are practically snow-free I was told. Yet, those are the more rural/residential roads since Sunday now.

I check the bird-feeder now every day. We have some routine guests that show up regulary :-)

Channels are starting to freeze.

The birds are not so keen about the weather. There’s only one place where the water is not frozen and the whole bird population is now there. A lonely seagull is a bit angry about the weather.

# Some lessons-learned

During this time I learned some things. First: Once again I got reassured how good it is, to have food on stock for a week or more. The supermarkets are open, but are not that easy to reach. So, while there is the option to buy stuff, it gives me some kind of piece of mind, that you don’t have to go for groceries, unless the roads allow it.

Second: I always will keep to have snow-chains in my car. I never had to use them in the years I was living in Innsbruck, but now they come in handy. Keep them there, you never know when you need them. Snow-chains are one of those things where you are really screwed if you would need them but don’t have them. Learned that years ago the hard way during a duty in the rescue service. Never again (but in the end all went well there).

Third: My Raspberry Pi server needs a battery backup or a UPS (uninterruptible power supply). We had a short power cut of less than 10 minutes on Sunday, but that was enough to crash it. I didn’t had the VMs set to autostart, so consequently the VM with our pi-hole didn’t boot, causing most of the phones to refuse to connect to the Wifi. I would have configured a secondary DNS server but my Fritzbox only allows to configure one :-(

Fourth: Keep an eye at your neighbors. They might not be as lucky as you are. Here everything was good, except for some cars that got stuck on our street. Nothing big.

All in all this was more of a fun week and I really enjoyed a good portion of snow :-)