Russia is known for its fierce winters. In fact, the Russians call it “General Winter”, because the winter helped them fight off so many invaders, including Napoleon and the Germans (but also the Vikings). Its the time of the year again and this time we have a real winter with - 15 C and lower. I actually like it. At least most parts of it.
At about 5 AM every morning (sometimes earlier) an army of workers starts to clean the streets, mainly by hand with brooms and shuffles, so that there isn’t a piece of ice or snow by the time the daily commute begins. Unfortunately they do this under my window and I am woken up daily at about 5 AM by the desperate scratching Kyrgyzstan workers, even on weekends and holidays (like now). I guess he’s thinking, if I don’t sleep, why would you?
Then there is an army of the road workers. Sweeping the snow off Moscow streets and walkways has system and these guys work day and mostly night to get the job done. First the snow gets pushed to the side, then some tractor or some special snow collecting machine loads it onto a truck and its driven to some station, where they finally dump it into the river (with all the salt and dirt that comes with it).
Being a Moscovite you blend this out and don’t see it anymore, but when I found this video on Youtube, I just remembered how impressed I have been about this process, when I first came here.

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Technorati Tags: Ice, Moscow, Snow, Winter, Zima

Uff, what a Winter. 0 C snow/rain for weeks now. We can feel global warming over here as well. This is my 6th Winter in Moscow. Last one was pretty mild already and this one started out fine with normal temperatures of -15 C, but for the past weeks we have the dirty slush and it doesn’t seem to come to an end. Worse is only the ice rain. Sometimes temperatures drop below 0C at the bottom, but slightly above Moscow it must be warmer, because its raining down on Moscow and turns it into an ice city. This happened about 3 times in the past week and this morning I slid to work again.

Its a problem for me with sneakers or mountain shoes already, but how painful is this for all of these high heeled women. I pay big respect to their ability to cope with this. Like the girl in front of me this morning. I was walking on a side street of Tverskaya near Pushkinskaya and its going downhill, but the walkway also drops to the left as well. You are sliding in a 45 degree angle to the down left into the parking cars. This girl was managing to walk down straight on the sidewalk with ultra high heels and she almost never slid or stopped. Only once at the bottom she went a bit more slowly. Respect!
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Technorati Tags: High Heels, Ice, Moscow, Rain, Streets, Winter, Woman, Women, Zima