20 years' worth of winter

They told me while I was in Canada, "Oh boy, just you wait 'til the winter. Last year we had several feet of snow and it was 30 degrees (C) below freezing!"
I don't handle cold very well, and my home town's winter temperatures usually just hover around freezing but on the plus side, so I shuddered at the thought. During my 2 week return back home in the summer, I packed my skiing pants and snowboarding jacket (in horribly mismatched bright red and piercing purple) in anticipation of otherwise being refrigerated to death at the end of my stay. But when it was time for me to leave Toronto, the temperature hadn't dipped lower than -7 (that's 19 F, for my US readers) and I told people I was kind of disappointed at not having experienced a true, Canadian winter (although I was secretly relieved).

But little did I know what excellent mental preparation I'd had for coming home - Gothenburg is experiencing 20 years' worth of winters that never came - instead, they all came together. So instead of the grey, wet, slippery and depressing slush that we're used to, our town (and indeed, most of the country) is swathed in about half a metre of snow. The town is really quiet. The cars sort of just hum along as they skid and slither along the roads. Pedestrians are protected by walls of piled-up snow. The sounds of the town on a weekend are of families with kids and sleds (presumably they are very happy about the city being so hilly). Bikes are involuntarily hibernating under a very fluffy communal blanket.



While it's bright, pretty and very cozy, there's the peril of falling icicles, roofs are caving in and much of our infrastructure is out of commission. The water pipe outside my balcony is caked in a FOOT of clear ice.

Normally, we'd jokingly call a 2cm-thick layer of snow in Göteborg "SNOW CHAOS!!" because our public transport handles it so badly. But now? Reference points are shifting. I think one foot of snow is quite manageable these days.

So yesterday was the 1-month mark of my coming back home to Göteborg. During the past month I have felt the joy and peacefulness that comes with returning to loved ones, a working environment that feels welcoming and productive, old haunts, a family with whom I have a better communication than ever, and my own flat.

As for Canada - yes, I miss it. I really do, every day. I miss my friends, my roomies, our little house and the city itself.

But its winter this year, I hear, is the warmest in a long time. Hm.