Being that I’m from New York, I’m pretty used to snow. Also, I’m used to people that know how to deal with snow. Well, apparently that is different here in St Etienne, as this week I learned that snow = chaos in the département de la Loire.
Last week we had a slight bit of snow during the night into Friday. So, naturally my bus was blocked and I had to walk into town to the tram, to get to the bus stop for the intercity coach to go to work Friday morning. Obviously I was late since it took a lot longer to get there and I missed the coach.
If I thought that was bad, it was absolutely worse on Tuesday when it was snowing heavily all day and I did not have class until 4pm. Well the snow was certainly collecting and did not seem to be slowing down. I waited for the bus for 20 minutes and it didn’t come. At that point if I had ever caught a bus it wouldn’t have even been worth it with how late I would have arrived. So I called the teacher who’s class I had and he said it was alright, since it wasn’t sure I’d be able to return.
In total we got about a half a foot, but the people here do not know how to deal with the snow. So even though I had no classes on Wednesday, the day AFTER the storm, I would not have been able to get to school because the intercity coach was not running.
In any case, the first layer of snow is quite pretty, so here are some pictures.
(Click on pictures to expand. Use arrow keys to move between images.)