Categories: uncategorized
Date: 24 January 2007 09:46:33
So, my boyfriend picked a perfect day to arrive in the Netherlands. It was the storm day. As previously posted, I was going to the airport to surprise him but it turned into quite a drama. When the winds picked up to about 120 km/h at about 4pm, they started to cancel trains. I needed to get from Den Haag to Amsterdam Schipol. I waited at the train station in Den Haag for about an hour and a half and they announced they were going to let ONE train go to Schipol (at this stage I was getting quite anxious because I thought I might miss him at the airport). It was absolutely packed with people and it took twice as long to get to Schipol. At one point there was an announcement that went overhead saying that we were the ONLY passenger train running in the Netherlands at the moment. Boy, did I feel safe!
When I got there, luckily the boyfriend had also been delayed (40 minutes on the tarmac waiting for the door to open so that it didn't blow off and another hour for the baggage for the same reason).
"Welcome to the Netherlands, there is a storm today and no trains". What a great introduction for him! There were absolutely no trains leaving Schipol so we did the round of buses. What would normally take half an hour on the train, took 3 hours on 2 (rather blown about) buses. We got home after midnight and I had to be at work the next day.
They think over 200 million euros of damage was done to properties. Sadly, many people were injured and around 40 people were killed so my boyfriend and I can consider ourselves very blessed that we both safely arrived at our destination.
On a completely different note, this morning, I woke up to snow. It was so beautiful. I must go home and take a photo at lunch time.