Winter is Coming

1 October is, Aygul assures me, the time that Krasnoyarsk residents change the tyres on their cars. Normal tyres don’t cut it once the autumn kicks in here, you need to use special snow tyres. And the worrying implication of Aygul’s statement is that snow is expected any time from 1 October. This seems awfully soon to me, and just two days ago it would have been impossible to believe that we’d be going straight from our Indian summer (which, by the way, is called a ‘women’s summer’ in Russia, because… oh no wait that makes literally no sense) to the depths of a snowy winter. But yesterday temperatures dropped so low that I actually needed my coat for the first time since I arrived here, and today is one of those crisp, clear autumnal days that always seems to presage a spell of stinging cold.

When I walked outside this morning, I saw the first patches of frost on the ground, and everyone was wrapped up in quilted coats and scarves. Within just over twenty-four hours, Krasnoyarsk had gone from sunbathing weather to ‘don’t go out with wet hair or you’ll get hypothermia’ weather. At the bus stop, I made the innocent but stupid mistake of standing next to a guy who was playing very loud music through a speaker which was tied round his neck. He was staring fixedly at some point across the busy road from the bus stop. I followed his gaze, but all I could see was a railing and a bush. Maybe there was a squirrel somewhere. I looked back at the guy, who was still enraptured, and just stared at the bush agape. Then, suddenly, he rubbed his hands together in a pantomime of glee, still looking across the road, but now with a look of utter delight and anticipation. I looked across the road expecting to see that a friend of his had emerged from the bushes or something. Nada. Just a bush. Then the guy turned around, spat on each of his hands, rubbed them together vigorously once more, and jumped straight up with his hands in the air. He caught the roof of the bus shelter, and started doing pull-ups with manic energy. There were a couple of old ladies sitting under the shelter, but none of this phased them in the slightest, and they all kept on looking stubbornly at the road, waiting for their bus to appear. When the speaker and pull-ups man had descended from his spontaneous workout, he looked me dead in the eye and sang in a robust bass voice ‘oh frost and suuuuuuuuuun! Oooooooooh!’ Fortunately, at this point my bus arrived. I’m not sure exactly what was making this guy so energetic, but I’d hazard a guess, based on the lyrics of his little ballad, that it might have been the turn in the weather. It felt something like a hugely exaggerated game of charades, in which one of the participants had to act out ‘you really bloody love the winter and it’s finally arrived. Plus you’re weird.’ 

The bus ride brought another reminder of the change in the weather. The bus driver had clearly been itching all year to show off that his bus had a fancy-ass heating system, which heated the whole bus and everything. With really hot heat. And now it was finally his time to shine. His patience had paid off. The weather was fiiinally something approaching cold enough for heating, so it was time to grill his fortunate passengers to death. My, how lucky they’d count themselves to have got on the 85 today. Just to think, they were considering getting on that loser Alexander’s shoddy green bus and then they’d be freezing to death in boring old bog-standard room temperature! Ha!’ Just two stops later, I’d taken off my coat and hoodie, and had to really restrain myself just to keep my T-shirt on. It was like the driver was trying to create his own personal portable banya and was getting the unsuspecting passengers involved in a spontaneous opening ceremony as a kind of publicity stunt. Everyone else on the bus just stood there in their shirts, jumpers, jackets, padded coats and scarves with their fur-trimmed hoods up, sweating like Trump on a lie detector. I wondered why they didn’t just take them off. Maybe they were only on for a couple of stops and they didn’t want the hassle? Nope. Fifty minutes (eighteen stops) later, one woman stood up, grasping the pole with both hands and looking very unwell, her face still semi-visible under two different hoods, and half-stepped half-fell off the bus, leaving a trail of sweat behind her.

This leads me to a question which I am asked a lot. ‘How do Russians cope with the cold?’ The answer, in my experience at least, is that they don’t. Just two days ago, back when it was still warm, I went out for dinner with a group of friends from English Club. Before we left the INTERRA building, they asked ‘don’t you have a coat?’ I did have a coat, but it was in my bag. 

‘Aren’t you going to put it on before we get outside?’

‘No. It’s not cold.’

*Looks of horror*

My friends came to the conclusion that I’m a ‘true Englishman’, as if existing in a country where the weather ranges from ‘not great’ to ‘ok’ somehow makes you more qualified to not wear a coat on a balmy evening in late summer. Coming from born and bred Siberians, I found this slightly strange. But it hasn’t escaped my notice that most people walking in the streets have been wearing coats for the last week or so, even on the warmest days of this unexpected second summer. And there’s a whole coat culture here too. All cafes and restaurants (even the bad ones) have either coat hangers or cloakrooms. In fact, it’s technically impolite to sit down for a meal without taking off your coat first. Maybe, because of the super cold weather they get here later in the year, Siberians have bonded with their coats more than we have in Britain. Maybe they see coats as a seasonal (rather than a practical) thing, so whenever late September swings around, regardless of the temperature outside, the quilted coats must come out. Or maybe they’re just anticipating five months of eye-icingly (get it, because eye-wateringly?) cold temperatures, and trying to extort every last scrap of warmth from the autumn sun. I imagine that I’ll change my blasé tone and become somewhat humbler once we get into the minus thirties, but until then I reserve my right to be robustly disdainful of such a wimpy response to mild temperatures.

I was on the bus for just over an hour in total. I was going from my home on the left bank to the eastern side of the right bank, where Eldar kindly offered to show me around the Chinese market. It was rather special, but totally bonkers. Think Camden Market, but increase the madness by a factor of ten, and then mix in the fact that nobody speaks English… or Russian. Apparently a lot of the stall owners have managed to live and work in Russia for a very long time without learning the language, which makes the inevitable haggling process much more fun. Both Eldar and I have studied a tiny bit of Chinese (both only for a year), but we didn’t fancy putting it to the test, so we just walked through the market and admired the rows and rows of tracksuits and shapkas. They also had some shops with really cheap Chinese ingredients, so I’ll definitely have to make a return trip soon and try to cook some Chinese food. We arrived at the market quite early in the morning, so it had relatively few customers, which meant that stallholders treated us like gold dust. They pounced on us as soon as we got near, urging us to come and inspect their collection of women’s glittery trousers. If we ignored them, they’d heckle us a bit, and maybe follow us for a while too, urging us to go back and have a proper look. I wondered if this tactic ever resulted in sales, but I guess it must have done, because the market still exists and the stalls are richly stocked.

Then we wandered along the main street on the right bank for a bit. It’s a beautiful, wide boulevard with a tramway running down the middle and grand brightly coloured buildings set back a luxurious distance from the road. We walked past the space academy too, which had a giant rocket outside of it. I’m not sure if any actual astronauts started off there, but that’s a very cool thought if they did.

The tram line on the right bank

The view of the left bank across the Yenisei taken from the right bank

Then I crossed back over to work on the left bank via the Island of Rest. It’s a beautiful island, but I don’t get what’s particularly restful about it. Maybe there’s a spa hidden on it somewhere or something like that, but all I could see was a massive sports stadium, which I think sends out mixed messages. At work, I managed once again to fritter away a stupid amount of time reading and talking about Brexit. For some reason, the whole thing becomes much less worrying and much more interesting when you’re out of the country. Maybe everyone should try it. We could turn Britain into a huge uninhabited sauna complex and nature reserve. Make it a proper island of rest and forget about the stress of Brexit. I spent the afternoon in my T-shirt, while my colleagues huddled by heaters in their jumpers and wrapped themselves in blankets.

The Island of Rest on the right, the left bank on the left