Halfway down the Danube

Snow (1)

It's January, we're in Eastern Europe, there's snow on the ground.

It's not that there's so very much snow. It's only 20 cm (8 inches) or so.

But the streets aren't plowed. (Well, the main streets are, but we don't live on a main street.) And nobody in our neighborhood has cleaned the sidewalk. Nobody, that is, except for the mysterious House Where Someone Important Lives, and I hesitate to walk in front of that house, because it distracts the security guards from their TV. People sweep and shovel from door to sidewalk, but it stops there.

So the walk from my house to the office, which is just four or five blocks, has become a slow, careful shuffle. Like a premonition of old age: in thirty or forty years, I'll walk like this all the time.

It's also cold. It went down to -10 centigrade last night -- that's about 14 degrees Fahrenheit for our American readers -- and it's going down to -12 for the weekend.

Oh, well, at least everyone seems to be healthy again [crossed fingers]. And the snow has brought some interesting changes. The Gypsies who wandered the streets calling for scrap metal and old clothes have gone indoors for the winter. They've been replaced by an old Romanian man who sells brooms. Big ones; he carries a dozen or so over his shoulder, and shuffles slowly along calling out his wares.

And our landlord's mother-in-law, who lives in the apartment under us, has started feeding the sparrows. So now there's always a crowd of them, little feathered freeloaders, lurking hopefully in the front garden.

Alan doesn't much like snow, by the way. Yow, it stings! Get it away from me.

That's my boy.

Posted by douglas at January 8, 2004 03:48 PM