Usually I get wake-up calls from my mom. Some minutes after I woke up this afternoon, my mom came over to check on me, because she could neither call me on my landline nor on my cellphone (and I didn't hear her WhatsApp messages arrive). At least I had internet access (unfortunately I have the same provider for all 3), so we checked for info on an outage. Didn't find much then. But we found out later that apparently it was a nation-wide outage.

An hour after my mom had gone home I was toasting schnitzels, which might have been a bad idea, because suddenly the electricity was gone and I heard a noise from the breaker panel. I wasn't in complete dark though: curiously the living-room sockets were still working. I grabbed a flashlight and checked the breaker panel, but all switches were in the same position. Huh.

Due to the network outage I couldn't call my mom. So I wanted to write her on WhatsApp, but that didn't work either, because my router gets its electricity from a corridor outlet (because of its complicated setup I couldn't just plug it in in the living room). So I didn't have any contact to the outside world, which was totally weird and scary.

After checking that the fridge wasn't working (because food is precious and I hate to waste it), I managed to gather enough courage to go and ask my neighbor if I could use his phone or if he'd take a look at my breaker panel. Thank fuck it wasn't late and he was home! So he saw that my residual-current circuit breaker was tripped out and he flipped the switch. Everything was working again. Huh, that was easy.

I had noticed that breaker when I initially checked the panel, but didn't dare try it, because it wasn't mentioned on the key (so I didn't know what it does) and was worried that maybe I'd switch off the rest of the electricity.