When The Snow Falls, France Shuts Down

This past week the north region of France recieved about 3 inches of snow on Thursday. I took the train to Lille to finish up some Christmas shopping and the ride there was glorious! On the train I was listening to Christmas music and gazing out the window to the snow covered French countryside. However, since it snowed SNCF (French train company) announced that the trains will be running below high speed due to the snow. Now being from Minnesota this made me laugh out loud! While waiting for my train back to Fourmies I was watching hoards of people crowd around these heaters (there are only 4 of them in the whole station!) and I was just thinking...why aren't there more heaters!! I was freezing and shaking by the time my train arrived (later than scheduled due to snow). I read in the Lille newspaper that 25% of flights out of Paris were cancelled because of snow. Luckily the trains tend to keep running even though it snows :). Yesterday we recieved about 5-6 inches of heavy, wet snow...yay. I wouldn't've minded but I didn't bring waterproof winter boots with me which was really dumb but I was under the impression that this region didn't get much snow! Oh well. When I arrived home yesterday after an afternoon of baking failed peanut butter cookies I had to shovel my gravel walkway with a dirt shovel. To me this was insane because in Minnesota those just wouldn't work but alas I'm in France....it took me about 45-60 minutes to shovel my small, narrow walkway and I was furious after...Mainly because I don't have the proper footwear. Luckily I have 12 days until I'll be getting different ones back home. Since it snowed yesterday, Fourmies turned into a ghost town. There were hardly any cars on the road and if they were, they were stuck. On all sides of the road there were cars buried by the snow and I feel sorry for those people because they won't be going anywhere for awhile...hah. People were walking in the middle of the road to avoid having snow up to their knees. Also, there are no snow plow to be found....How do people get around?! This baffles me. Today there isn't snow falling so hopefully it's done!