Holy...

The 5 magical minutes

…shit, is what I said when I got into my Uber and slammed the door. This might have been offensive on any other day, but on that day my driver looked at me and burst out laughing.

It was the day on which we had the first snow of the year in NY: It was magical for about 5minutes; after that it got windy and nasty, then dirty and grey, then slippery and dangerous, and then wet and annoying. 

When I left work, I literally slipped on my first step out of the building and fell into a friend’s arms. On our 5minute walk to the bar, I was slipping and sliding and would have fallen over dozens of times if my friend hadn’t offered me his arm (which I held on to as if my life depended on it).

By the time I got back to Brooklyn, snow and rain had combined to form deep puddles and small rivers of ice-cold water, which made it impossible to cross the road without ending knee-deep in water (a minor exaggeration, admittedly). There was no way I was gonna make it home semi-dry and unbruised and so I got an Uber to drive the 800m from the subway station to my home. Pathetic.

I’ve always been scared about winter in New York (and summer for that matter). I remember speaking to a colleague from New York this time last year when I was still in Rome. As customary, we exchanged pleasantries and naturally spoke about the weather and he told me that they had had a blizzard and ‑20°C in New York. In Rome, we had had +20°C on that day I wasn’t even wearing a winter coat.

But despite horror stories, I was really not prepared for this rather minor snow storm that hit the city last week. And this was just the beginning - it's gonna get much much worse. 

There’s only one possible solution to the problem: Escape! To Colombia in November, to Rome and Cologne in December and to the Caribeean in January 😊