Snow Day, Back to Work

I came in early last Thursday evening, after all but one and half of my potential 7 hours of classes had been cancelled for the day. Fortunately, it was my last class who had remained, a group of soon to be doctors who like to treat me to tapas and drinks after class. I don't complain. The metro went slower that night. I didn't walk through the door to my apartment until nearly 2am. My roommate Peter was lying on the couch.

"Is it snowing?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Just cold."

It seemed like a strange question to ask, especially at 2 am in our living room, which has window that takes up practically the entire wall and overlooks a park. My morning classes had been cancelled as well. I got into bed and turned off my alarm.

I woke up the next day to the normal grey light of my interior room. Without bothering to check the clock, or put on pants, I left my room with the intention of cooking some breakfast and was instantly shocked to see snow, heavy snow, coming down outside my window. There's something mystical about the snow. Eager to capture the moment, I rushed to get my camera. I snapped the first few shots hanging out of my window, still pants-less and shirtless (but not underwareless, I thought I should say).

One of the first things I noticed was the silence. M-30, the main highway surrounding Madrid, had almost no traffic, just a slow moving car every now and then. I think of many things when I think of Madrid. Quiet is generally not one of them. The second thing I noticed were the people in the park. They seemed a bit perplexed by the whole thing, their animals too. The shining torch of their confusion? Their umbrellas.

Sadly, my snow day was cut short by an ill-timed migraine. I tried to run it off at the gym, but this one got the better of me and I had to waste precious snow time sleeping off the pain. Still, I didn't miss out on the evening news reports, one of which interviewed several people from youngest to oldest, each insisting that a progressively longer time ago had been the last time they had seen a snow like this one. There was also a man explaining how to put chains on a car, though I'm not sure where in Madrid one could hope to find them, or anything to use them on, for that matter.

Amazingly, after the three days the snow is still here, albeit in patches. Madrid has proven itself tough enough to survive a real winter storm, except of course that today when I went grocery shopping they didn't have any carrots, or salad, or chicken, or bread. A couple more days of snow, we might not have made it.