Dacha –The Sequel

Spoilers: it does start to snow in the end

A month and a bit ago, I very prematurely predicted snow. As did the rest of the city. Everyone changed their normal tyres for snow tyres, which made loud crunching sounds at every slight rotation of the wheel, and a cataclysmic death-is-coming-for-you whooshing sound when the cars were in motion. The excessively bulky winter coats were gradually phased out, and began to be replaced by coats so comically padded that everyone looked like a walking snowball, as if they were anticipating the coming snow, which, by all accounts, was going to be fast, dense, and heavy. Then, on the fated day when we were all braced for the apocalyptic snowfall, we got a couple of inches, which melted before the week was out.

In spite of this underwhelming performance by the heavens, Siberians clung stoically to the hope of their beloved snow coming imminently. The snow tyres were not changed back for normal tyres, so the whole city began to rumble with the sound of a million tiny rubber grooves crunching into tarmac roads, roaring out for some snow or ice to bite into. The combination of puddles on the road and softer tyres made cars particularly vulnerable to aquaplaning, which sounds fun, but is actually rather scary (who’da thunk it?). Krasnoyarskers were unwavering though: the snow was coming soon, no need to change the tyres back. Aquaplaning was just a bit of fun, why be a spoilsport? Even when the last puddles had evaporated or drained, and the city was beginning to feel almost autumnal again, the resolute people of this truly unique town continued to wear their puffy coats with fur-trimmed hoods, which, my friend Yulia pointed out, ‘make it impossible to pick up girls because how do you know what their figure’s like under that huge coat!?’.

Their patience was rewarded. About three weeks later. By this point, everyone was so dehydrated from wearing thermals, woolly hats, and snowball coats (not to mention heating their buildings and buses to eye-watering temperatures) that there was an almost audible sigh of relief as the first few inches of snow began to flutter down from the milky sky. The town’s tyres gave one last triumphant roar as they compacted the first snows, and then died down to a soft swishing sound as they rolled contentedly over the ice. After a gruelling month of false alarms and sacrificing a comfortable body temperature to the snow gods, Krasnoyarskers were returned to their natural state of mildly numbing cold. Then severely numbing cold. Then we hit -25. At -25, taking your glove off is tantamount to throwing away your hand. It becomes totally unusable for the next fifteen minutes, even if you rest it directly on a radiator. You can’t type on a touchscreen with any real precision, so you just have to rest your phone on a bin or a bench and use your other (gloved) hand to drag the finger of your exposed hand across the phone screen until you’ve come up with something resembling a word.

But the snow came stealthily. Before I’d even registered its existence, it was up to my ankles, and roads became unwelcome impromptu ice rinks, where the ice was invisible, crazy slippy, and was likely to get you run over if you did fall (surpriiiiiise!). I’m aware that I’ve already lumped ‘Siberians’ and ‘Krasnoyarskers’ together a fair few times in this blog, as if you could possibly describe all the inhabitants of a sizeable city under one sweeping term, but I’m gonna go ahead and do that one more time: Krasnoyarskers have a weird relationship to snow. When you ask whether they like it or not, most people simply shrug and smile. ‘It’s just there’ is the response you normally get. Or they’ll avoid the question and tell you about the black snow that fell last year. Generally, I get the feeling that Krasnoyarskers like snow. Like me, they’re willing to tolerate the horrendous cold in return for the beauty that snow brings to the city, and perhaps also for the hardy status that comes with being from the area. After all, snow brings with it some pretty stonking stories. I was enthusing to my friend Andrey about snow-clearing equipment recently. ‘I mean I’ve never seen one of those snow-sweeping machines in England. I guess we don’t have enough snow to justify investing in them on a large scale, so we just shut everything down when it snows instead.’

‘Ah our equipment does the job’ sighed Andrey, ‘but it’s far from the best stuff available. A couple of years ago, the local government just poured chemicals on the street, and it melted the stuff right away just like that.’ He snapped his fingers.

‘Why did they stop?’ I asked, pretty sure that I already knew the answer.

‘Ah some idiots started whining about the side effects. Said the chemicals “destroyed their boots” or “killed their dogs” or “gave them chemical burns and made them seriously ill” or whatever. Pathetic really. Probably all conspiracy theories.’

I chuckled nervously. ‘Well I guess they’ve stopped using that method now right Andrey? Right? Right Andrey?’

Andrey was staring ponderously into the middle distance with a mournful but somewhat maniacal air. ‘Yeah they have.’ He sighed remorsefully.

Another favourite snow story of mine came from Kiril. I was gushing about how impressive it was that Russian schools only close when it gets to -35, considering that my school used to close in -2 if there was enough snow to justify it. ‘Oh sure.’ He said. ‘But you know there are some schools which do close for a good couple of months in the winter. If you go a few hundred kilometres north of here, there’s a town where the snow falls so thickly that people who live on the ground floor are snowed in all winter. They can only leave their house by walking out a window ON THE FIRST FLOOR. Schools tend to be closed for at least a month every year. Particularly if they’ve only got the one floor!’

Shortly before I came to Armenia on my super-duper-awesome-exciting adventure which has the most bonkers reason behind it (you’ll have to read my next blog to find out the crazy reason why I’m here) Danil invited me, Zuzana, and our friend Lena to his parents’ dacha again. We ate unholy quantities of chocolate, homemade varenyky (veeery big dumplings), and then danced along to deafeningly loud music from the state-of-the-art sound system at their neighbours’ house. We also sampled the delights of Danil’s parents’ sauna, which was far too hot. We offset the far-too-hotness by running out into the snow every ten minutes, which was far too cold.

The next day, we set off for Chernaya Sopka. We drove there last time, but this time we decided to walk it. The snow had turned the track up there into a winter wonderland. And Danil’s cuuuuuuteaf dog accompanied us there, so we felt like children in an enchanted forest. The steep slope at the very top was made slightly more entertaining by the snow, which meant that we slid down several hundred times at each attempt to clamber up. It was like a Total Wipeout course. Except there were rocks. So it was like a Total Wipeout course, but more fun. The view at the top was stunning as always, and Danil and I recreated a photo that we took last time. On the way down, Danil introduced me to the sport of snow rolling (guess what it involves, go on!), which I wasn’t very good at. Maybe I need more practice... Then we went to the same stable that we went to last time, where the horses looked both twice as cold and twice as fairy tale-y because of the snow.

Snow rolling