The Wonders of Winter in Kiev

After months of grey mid-40 degree days, winter has finally arrived. It has been snowing on and off (more on than off) for the past four days, it is down right coooold outside (and near my un-insulated windows). Winter in Kiev means a variety of things; a legitimate excuse not the leave my apartment, but rather stay in and watch hours and hours of dvds (I worked my way through Season 1 of LOST, that’s twenty-something episodes, in less than a week…it was intense. I am addicted…); if I do manage to leave the apartment, a legitimate excuse not to walk places; increased soup and hot beverage intake (I recently discovered the one place to get coffee to go in this country…McDonald’s); wearing lots of layers and bulky clothes which keep me warm and also have the benefit of disguising some of the weight I have mysteriously put on…One of the most exciting things is that fur coats and hats are out in full force. Here, I am not the only one wearing a giant bushy fur shapka (hat). Women (and some men) wear fur coats of all lengths and colors, and there is not a paint throwing PETA person in sight.

Lots of snow also means lots of snow removal techniques. One that is familiar to us in the West is the use of salt to melt snow. My friend Katya and I had the pleasant experience of being pelted with salt by a salt truck on our way to a bizarre and hysterical Visotsky concert. (Visotsky was basically the Jim Morrison of the Soviet Union…). A method that we are less familiar with in the US, is the phenomenon of “snow sweeping ladies.” Now, in this part of the world, it is the norm to clean up “messes” by pushing them around with brooms (usually bundles of twigs), or a dirty rag on the end of a stick. It is always a lady in a standard issue blue with white piping apron-ish thing. Every building/organization/store has at least one of these ladies. You might call them cleaning ladies…

In some cases (most cases), this method does little more than spread the puddle of dirty water at a store entrance around the floor of the entire store. In the case of snow, however, this method seems most effective! There is a group of ladies that has appeared every morning for the past few days to sweep away the snow on the road running through the yard outside my apartment building. Who are they? I wonder. Do they live in these buildings? Do they work for the city? Who sent them? Why are there 4 ladies cleaning this one small road? Is the road really that important? Only a handful of cars drive on it…So many questions.

What about work? You may be asking. Yes, I do work. I have been deemed the Warm Homes expert, and been given the not so small or as simple as it sounds task of “opening as many Warm Homes as possible.” This is easier said than done given the unique breed of Ukrainian Babushky I am dealing with and the small task (I’m being sarcastic) of finding volunteers other than myself who are willing to schlep to the far ends of Kiev (this is a very big city) to drink tea, chat, and maybe give a lecture--for free.

In my free time, that is when I am not working, trudging through snow, watching LOST (it is not unlike a full time job), nursing the injured disk in my back (that means not gym for now…), I am planning exotic getaways to other Former Soviet countries…