"Stansted Airport currently closed, Heathrow Airport currently closed, Luton and London City Airport closed, Gatwick Airport is not accepting any more airplanes at the moment" - this announcement might not be of particular interest, when you are sitting on your sofa or having a nice cappuccino in a cosy cafe, if you are airborne and heading towards London you might think differently. Sentences by our pilot like "We have enough fuel on board" and "we will reduce speed and hope Stansted Airport ground personnel will be able to free the landing runway from snow and ice" were not really soothing.

Having not experienced a harsh winter in London apart from a nail thick white blanket, which disappeared in the first ray of sunlight of the following day, I was astonished to see London covered in snow. But how this amount can cause so much chaos is quite puzzling for me - maybe due to my central European heritage. Suffering from the worst snowfall in 18 years, the weather conditions had a huge impact especially on public transport. The tube was heavily delayed (okay, this is routine on the weekend), overground trains were almost completely suspended, the bus service was extremely restricted. Due to the lack of snow ploughs, thousands of citizens were "snowed in" and therefore forced to stay home. According to the radio one out of five Londoners was not able to get to work. London Major Boris Johnson stated: "There's no doubt about it, this is the right kind of snow, it's just the wrong kind of quantities."
But one man's meat is another man's poison, I have rarely seen so many children smiling and screaming with joy - especially as two snowballs hit me while I was trying to drag my suitcase through the slush.