every day brings a new low...

…in temperatures. the temperature is an obsession here and every other building has an electronic thermometer on it telling you quite how unimaginably cold it is. apparently, it even affects property prices because the north of the city averages 5 degrees less than the south. earlier this week it got down as far as minus 28 and even the siberians think it’s cold below minus 25 and they shut the schools for the under-12s. bizarrely, this actually felt warmer than later in the day when it rose to the dizzying heights of minus 19. it is the wind that makes the difference. imagine pressing your face against the inside of a freezer, scraping your skin against the ice and repeatedly slamming the door against your head – well, it is much worse than that. i was only outside for 15 minutes and could feel the epidermis blackening and dying on the tiny bits of exposed skin on my face.

naturally, none of this impresses the siberians. many of them are like old people in their 80s who add a few years to their age and pretend to be in their 90s, as if they weren’t old enough. minus 28? this isn’t cold – last winter it was minus 45. you should have seen it – now that, my foreign friend, that is cold. i even did a little experiment with my students, getting them to assign temperatures to the scale - freezing, very cold, cold, cool, mild, warm, very warm, hot. warm came in at 0 degrees and mild at minus 5. obviously, i thought this was ridiculous, but then when the temperature rose to minus 10 the next day it actually seemed like a mini-heatwave and i was too hot. i think this is what they mean by going native.