Cerulean Posted November 4, 2006 Report Posted November 4, 2006 It was late October and I was moving to Sweden for ten months. After so many years living in the Emirates, I no longer owned a coat, shoes even, or anything practical to help me tackle a European winter. I left Sharjah with the blistering fifty-and-change heat of summer having subsided into a mild forty or so. Hitting England en route to visit my parents, meant coping with the chilly crunch of autumn, bracing winds that whistled up your trouser legs and - dum-dum-dah! - getting kitted out for my Scandinavian jaunt. Intellectually I knew temperatures could plummet to minus twenty five in a Swedish winter. Problem was I had absolutely no idea of how cold that was. None, null, ingen alls, nej! You might as well have said minus sixty, or a hundred, or twelve for how little good the knowledge did me. There are pivotal moments in your life, I reckon, upon which you gaze - as the comfort of the future is warming the cockles of your hindsight. During such moments I usually raise my eyes skyward and call myself a bloody idiot. I hadn’t long to wait. Duly I went shopping, bought a coat, boots, scarf, hat and gloves. All stuff that was perfectly appropriate for an English autumn, but not best suited to my needs. I don’t really recall why I chose that particular little black hat with matching gloves. Perhaps it was a gesture; perhaps I thought I’d look brooding and Slavic in such a hat. Perhaps the felt was soft and the strip of fake fur, furry – perhaps I was a bloody idiot… Granted it was coolish by Swedish standards when I arrived, but I had probably been less than ten seconds off the plane when I felt my nose hairs freeze. I didn’t know I had nose hairs until my nostrils flared and prickled with each twanging ice rush. Every breath was a searing gasp of horror, my eyes widened - not just with shock, but to stop the blink of frozen lashes peeling the corneas off my eyeballs. Other people were androgynous bundles of waterproof, padded, quilt. No doubt stuffed with goose down, or goose fat or reindeer fluff or something equally warm. Swaddled lumps of local wisdom, their hoods were pulled down so low, their scarves pulled up so high that there was nothing facial exposed, save a snug aura. Huge gloved maws protruded from jacket sleeves three feet thick. Boots were elephantine, sedge-stuffed waders. - I tottered through the pity and amused ‘let’s-laugh-at-the-tourist’ glances towards the meeting point; whereupon I was unable to change facial expressions because I’d two crystallizing ice stalactites forming up my nose like ram rods. Nor was I able to wave at the person meeting me as I had lost all sensation in extremities. Contrary to every expectation, however, the hat and gloves did come in handy. Safely tucked up for my first night in Linköping, within triple glazed windows and central heating on full blast – I wore them in bed and dreamed of the desert.
Elvina Posted November 5, 2006 Report Posted November 5, 2006 Lol! Det var meget sjov! Tak for advarselen! (Så pass var verkligen rolig! Tack själv för varningen!) I've never been to Denmark in winter, but you're experience in Sweden has just warned me - dress as if I'm visiting Antarctica! ~Elvina
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