Cold. Negative fifteen degrees Fahrenheit is, in my estimation, cold. Siberians think so too. But during the first truly cold snap of the season, everyone on the street was smiling. The day took on a holiday atmosphere: first day of real winter. The Russian ladies have broken out their fur coats, hats, and, sometimes, fuzzy rabbit boots. In the limited, silvery morning light that filters through frosted-over bus windows, I jostle along with a bunch of padded, round fur bodies with faces obscured by giant mekh halos—round puffballs, square ushanki, dandelion fluff aviators. I feel like I’m riding with a bunch of snuggly bears, collectively shivering.
“And the town is frozen solid in a vice,
Trees, walls, snow, beneath a glass.
Over crystal, on slippery tracks of ice,
the painted sleighs and I, together, pass.”
-Anna Akhmatova, excerpt from Voronezh