to withstand the cold. I will reitterate in this post my amazement at
this unrecognized skill. First a short story to illustrate my point.
I was standing outside a club in Moscow arround January 14, 2009
talking to a girl (in English). She was wearing the standard Russian
female outfit of a short dress panyhose and boots without gloves or a
hat.
**as an aside I have opened my eyes more on this trip. I now realize
this is not a "standard" outfit. At the time of this story happening I
found the outfit so marked that it stood out prominantly in my mind.
Thus I believed every woman wore these clothes everyday.**
I was dressed in my coat, gloves, hat, long underwear, and a whole lot
of shivering. It was night time and it was snowing moderately with a
descent wind blowing. Needless to say it was COLD. I looked at her
and there was not even a hint of a shiver. Midway through the
conversation I paused and asked "aren't you cold?". She replied with,
in retrospect was a tone combining a statment of obvious fact and
slight confusion, "no, I'm Russian".
As I walk through St Petersburg today with Valya, stepping into
puddles and through snow piles freezing my gonads off, I thought of
this story. Valya made some off handed comments about what a warm day
it was, which only compounded my feeling of inadequacy. I like the
cold and enjoy a good freeze, but I doubt I will ever come close to
being able to handle and thrive in these extreme temperatures, as my
local friends do. It is a skill that I am not sure they fully
appreciate they posess. From an outsiders perspective, it is impressive.
Keep in mind I am just that, an outsider. I have mentioned this
previously but recently the issue has resurfaced. When I write about
what I see and what I perceive it is from my very limited and narrow
perspective. It is like looking at a single picture frame from an
entire movie and trying to accuratly deduce the plot. I see only
snapshots of peoples lives. Perhaps an hour, a day, or even a week,
but compare that time to their entire life and you can see how much
information is never revealed.
Compound this with my inability to understand the language and you
realize there is much to be desired in my descriptions. I can only
comment on what I see and deduce. Hopefully as I continue to observe
and interact with the world around me I am able to build a more
complete schema of those I interact with regularly.
I would be remis if you were to take my description of New Years to be
a complete story of the lives of those involved. I am very good at
judging a person's character but not their history. The people I met
are genuinely good people and were warm, friendly, and inviting to me.
In addition to this they are very well educated. I wish I were able to
more fully participate in their conversations. I can only hope that in
some way they recognize the respect I have for them and how much I
value their openess and acceptance of my presence.
On a lighter note. I was visiting the university Valya attends. Ok
that's not really lighter per se but just hold on it gets funny. In
case you did not know, water here has an annoying tendancy to feeze
this time of year. This even happens on the eves of buildings. As the
frozen stalagtites cling to the buildings and more water and ice
build, the fixtures can become quiet large. This, then requires some
brave and insane worker to walk along the roof top and break off these
monstrosities. I have become accustomed to this site now. They tape
off the sidewalk and redirect foot traffic to avoid injuring stupid
tourists like myself. They are very good at making it clear the path
is not open, employing such tactics like jumping, yelling, and
flapping their arms, like a teradactile flying from danger. On this
particular occasion we had to cross the street. A feat which prooved
more difficult than I had anticipated. (here comes the funny part).
The street, for some reason, was no longer a street. It more closly
resembled a canal. By looking at various landmarks I was able to
deduce the water to be as much as three feet deep in some places. It
was an amazing thing to see, for me. No one else seemed to be taking
notice of the river (complete with rapids) raging through this little
section of road. Hopefully I will get a chance to post a picture so
you too can enjoy the renegade river. It was maybe the one time I had
wished it were more cold, to feeze the water. I think my boots are
still wet from the experience.
-Dana
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