Flames and Snow

I was going to write about my weekend trip to Amsterdam, but that will have to wait until next post. I just wanted to say, go the French protesters, showing the English how it's really done. They tried in London to put out the Olympic torch, but it wasn't until it got here, the true home of demonstrations, that they were successful, multiple times too.

The end of the relay was at Stade Charlety, which is a sports stadium literally 300m from where I live. So when I got home from work, even though this was at least 3 hours after the relay had finished, there were still hundreds of police lining the streets and the roads were all blocked off. And when I check the news I see that the French have really outdone themselves this time, unfurling huge banners on the Eiffel Tower and the Town Hall in protest and forcing the torch onto a bus for it's final leg to the stadium.

It looks like the torch relay is going to be an absolute joke along it's entire route, well done IOC you really made the right decision this time.

On to more important matters, the European spring, or rather lack of. It is now 2 and a half weeks after the official start of spring and I wake up this morning to see this (see photo above) outside my window. This is in Paris too, which is usually much warmer than the surrounding villages. The train stations had all got the sand out again, to stop the ice from forming. As my work is probably about 25kms from Paris the snow was much worse there. The photo to the left shows the forest just in front of my work.

The day then turned fine, before it was time to go home when it started to snow again. I just want to know when spring is actually going to start. It really looks like it is going to be another pathetic summer this year too.

Someone was saying that I will be having the unfortunate experience of a double winter this year I will leave Europe at the end of July (at the start of summer) to head back to Sydney in the middle of winter. But really, I think winter in Sydney is going to be so much warmer than any so-called summer could possibly be here that I probably won't even notice the difference.