I think I am finally beginning to tire of the winter. Yesterday was the coldest day in January with a high temperature of minus 20 degrees. That's almost thirty degrees difference between here and England and all of a sudden, ten degrees above freezing sounds positively tropical. Even the news that the weather will 'warm up' to a maximum of minus nine is greeted with enthusiasm. With the increase in temperature comes the promise of more snow and, as yet, I'm not fed up of that. I still get that excited might-get-a-day-off-school feeling in the morning when I look out of the window to see the street covered in snow and the cars going slowly round the corner sideways. It's a very childlike happiness, the sight of a fresh fall of clean, white snow, but it's one I think I will never tire of. Perhaps a remnant of living for so long in a country where the promise of snow is always greater than the reality.
I am, however, getting fed up of layering. Today I had to be at work, as usual for a Monday, at 7.30am. I get up at 6am and have, usually, plenty of time for a shower and coffee before venturing out to get the bus. The last couple of weeks though, have seen me nearly miss the bus on several occasions. This is all due to layering. An essential, and time consuming, part of the day. First the normal underwear, then the thermal: long johns and a long-sleeved top. Over this goes jeans and a t-shirt. Then a thin wool jumper, and a hoody. Boots, down jacket, scarf, hat and gloves. Then once I'm outside I put the hood up. I haven't owned a coat with a hood on since I was a kid and absolutely no-one put their hoods up then in case everyone else thought you were a big girl's blouse or something. Now I don't give a shiney sh*te. If I'm warm I don't care what I look like. I mean, everyone else is all bundled up. Everyone else's hair looks like mice have been nesting in it, everyone else's nose is redder than a baboon's bum, so who is looking at me? Dokładnie. No-one.
Over the weekend it snowed again, but it was the thin, powdery, annoying snow that stings your face and gets in your eyes and through the tiniest gap in your clothes. It must have snowed all of Friday night and it continued all day Saturday until after it went dark. Relentless, covering everything with a light film of white. Occasionally a flake would rest on a scarf or hat, a perfect six-pointed star, small and delicate, not melting because it was too cold and sharp enough to be able to study it carefully for some minutes. A thing that is beautiful, but so small and fragile at the same time. Together with others it can, and does, wreak havoc. In the hospital car park five snow-ploughs chased each other round and round before heading off in convoy towards the bridge where, on Friday morning, a speed-freak youngster doing over 100kph crashed his car into a bus shelter full of passengers, killing five of them and injuring several more. His car bounced over the parapet and down onto the road beneath but he walked away unhurt. The police said that he hit the people at the bus shelter so hard some of them flew through the air to land over thirty metres away, in the middle of a busy highway.
On Sunday the sun came out and the temperature dropped. Over the last couple of weeks the river has slowly been getting more and more clogged with ice. Small round floes, many of which carried a solitary seagull, or a host of cormorants, their wings held out to dry in the weak January sun, floated silently along the Vistula heading for Gdansk and the Baltic where they would try to congregate into a mass of wannabe icebergs. When the lumps hit the supports of the bridge, they made quiet slushing sounds that were like cold breaths in the crisp air. Overhead the traffic continued to thunder across the bridge, but down by the water, all waquiet. The only people there were me and a lonely fisherman, sitting on the ice hoping to catch a frozen fillet. That was last week. This week the ice has solidified and now the river is, on its surface at least, one solid mass of ice. The seagulls have gone now; their little boats are no longer viable means of transport. A group of Fieldfare, looking confused, could be seen trying to get a drink from the tiniest of holes that remained on the surface. They, too, will fly away soon, to Germany or somewhere further west, where the ground isn't solid and there is at least some sort of food.
To see the river was incredible, the widest stretch of water I have ever seen: solid, frozen and white. We had taken a bus there and walked across the bridge, then a tram and bus back to the flat. It took us less than an hour but by the time we returned we'd both had enough. How do people live in places where it is minus 20 or 30 for weeks at a time?
Today is just as cold and the prognosis for tomorrow is for the same but with more snow forecast on Wednesday. To experience this long, cold winter has long been a dream, to live through the snow and ice, the buses with their inside windows frozen - despite the heater being on - and to layer-up against the cold. Now it's becoming a chore, the hats and gloves and scarves every time you want to go out anywhere, even to the bin. When spring comes, as come it must, it will be a joyous occasion, to welcome the new growth, to see the green poking through the snow, to avoid being crushed by snow sliding off roofs, to feel the warm breeze and to know that on that breeze is the prospect of another summer in Warsaw.
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