Last Thursday I took the train to Innsbruck to visit my co-author. We haven't seen any snow since before Christmas, but when I arrived there it was snowing. I was so happy! We spent the next day cooking and baking for our upcoming cookbook and in the afternoon went ice-skating. Then the telefon rang. "The trains aren't running anymore and I have to take a bus. I don't know when I'll arrive," my husband said. While it had been snowing steadily all day, it had been snowing even more in western Austria and they had to close the major railway route due to possible avalanches. My husband was on the first train they didn't let through. It was a total chaos and he arrived 3 hours later than planned.

On Saturday the sun briefly came out and we went on a walk in a winterwonderland from one village to the next. I was in awe. While there is plenty of snow in the Swiss mountains, we have hardly had any where we live. It has been unusually mild, and we are all waiting for the cold and snow to make it feel like winter.

Traveling back home on Sunday took 2.5 hours longer than usual since the trains still weren't running. But we are lucky we weren't traveling on Monday. They had to close the roads as well.