If anyone can manage snow...

...that should be the Swiss, right? The country of Alps, Jura and Saleve gets plenty of it every year and lives off it quite nicely, too, so you would not expect any surprises there.

And yet, Geneva was plunged into absolute chaos few days ago when it snowed for 24 hours, resulting in about 30cm of snow cover. Traffic was mad, people spent hours stuck in jams, buses were completely out of schedule if they came at all. Wednesday morning TPG decided to cancel all buses and trolleybuses, then changed the decision few hours later, but nobody had any idea when or if the buses were going.

On the French side it was even "better"--our prefecture simply decided to cancel both of the buses that link us to Geneva, and we were left to either navigate uncleaned roads, or walk to work.

What was that all about?! I heard a few explanations:

1. The Swiss don't use salt or grit on roads (for environmental reasons or not to damage roads) so cleaning is very difficult
2. Geneva does not typically get that much snow so the city was caught by surprise

I would venture a third: maybe we just live in the wrong part of Switzerland? We consider the Swiss the paragon of efficiency and punctuality, and Switzerland as the place where things just work smoothly (at least that was my opinion before moving). But that might be Switzerland on the other side of the rostigraben, and not Suisse Romande? Here we could easily slip into a discussion on what it really means to be Swiss or if there is such a thing as being Swiss, but we won't--not on the account of 30cm of snow.

There is a silver lining, though--possibly because they don't use salt on the roads, the snow remains clean and very white, so we've had a truly fairy-tale landscape these days. The funniest thing is that I haven't enjoyed snow this much in decades, traffic jams and all...