Thursday, January 25, 2007

The slush has arrived

Today has been a rather uneventful day, so I've had time to reflect on the snows that finally hit yesterday (but were almost melted by today).

Yesterday I woke up to the sound of cars driving along a wet road. What with winter being so late this year, I really believed it would never come, so when I checked out the 'rain' and saw that it was 'snow', I was actually shocked.

It seems that winter may have finally come to Kyiv. Unfortunately, it was so long in coming that the people who are employed in winter-orientated occupations seem to have left town. There were no babushkas out sweeping the paths at the crack of dawn (8am), and very few snowploughs on the roads.

Throw into the mix above-freezing temperatures by mid-morning, and it was almost time to go swimming.


As you can see, there's there's a bit of slush on the roads, and with the Ukrainian tendency to park on the footpath, it's hard to distinguish where the road ends and the footpath begins. The hilarity of twisted ankles and a big a-over-t stack ensues. Not me personally, of course.

As I earlier mentioned, most of the snow had melted by this afternoon but the days are still short, so most flat surfaces in town didn't see the sunlight today. They're still very wet, and tomorrow the temps are dropping below zero for a few days. I'll have to pull out the ice-skates.


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