And on the 20th/21st of November, it snowed in Amsterdam

Actually, I can't really say for sure if it's snow. Hail, absolutely, yes, that's there. But what's happening outside right now is more than just freezing rain and it's not only hail... the tops of cars and metro stations and trams are now covered in a thin white layer of something very snow-like. Yes, that's snow coming down. I'm sure it won't stick, but at least for a moment, it's there.

And what a day for it! I heard about the snow in New York City and Philadelphia all day, and even got a message from a friend in Germany telling me about snow there. It was weird, actually, to all of a sudden hear from a bunch of different people in different places "hey, it's snowing!" When I got on my bike this morning, the sky was clear and blue and it was insanely sunny, so much that I wished for sunglasses. By the time I arrived at my office - 15 minutes later - the sky had turned dark and cloudy, the wind picked up, and it had begun to hail. 30 minutes later, I was standing near the windows admiring the clear blue sky. So strange.

And what is happening tonight is just beautiful. I am very, very happily spending the evening in my apartment after a few hours at the climbing gym. I was in the middle of catching up on a weeks worth of personal emails when I was distracted by the sudden hail/snowstorm going out outside my living room windows. All the cyclists were hunched over their handlebars, and the passengers sitting on the backs of the bikes were trying to use their "driver" as some kind of shield from the elements.

From my living room window, I can see one of the Weesperplein metro exits. A group of 20-something tourists came above ground, and started to freak out about the weather (as I'm sure when they got on the metro, it had probably been totally dry). One of the guys ran away from his friends to embrace the storm, then he made his friends go out from under the roof so he could take their picture. Everyone that I could see from my window was having fun with the weather, and I really enjoyed watching them. After about 10 minutes it calmed down, and the tourists put away their camera and went running to wherever they had planned. And of course, through the wind and snow and hail and rain, there were always people on bikes going back and forth along the wide bike lanes on my street.

I don't pretend to be a huge fan of cold, rainy, windy days. But there's something really nice about catching the first snow of the season, however brief it might be, and know that friends in different countries and different states in the US were all experiencing the same thing.