Winter has arrived in Göteborg

Now, I didn't think winter in Sweden was going to be that bad. Wikipedia promised Göteborg to have the same temperatures in December as Seattle does; same kind of rain, too. But apparently, Göteborg is also on the same latitude as Siberia, so...

Last year, my Swedish friends told me that Göteborg had one of the coldest winters they had seen in fifty years, and it's rumored that this year is to follow suit. For the past two weeks, it has been a blistering 13 degrees. Every morning, the snow that landed on us about a week or so ago is still here, simply because the temperature has never gone high enough for it to disappear. Today, it was 7 degrees; I had to wear all my coats, two scarves, a hat with earflaps, and gloves, just to beat the windchill that made it about -2. Let me tell you, these mornings, when you want to be back in bed, it takes all of your strength not to just flip out in the middle of a sidewalk-turned-windtunnel and curse out the world.

But I can deal with cold. My Boston-blood has made me impervious to these types of things. What is difficult to get used to is the dark.

Sunrise is at 8:00am. Sunset, around 3:30pm. There is a very small window of opportunity here, people. It messes with your sleep: people get tired at 5pm and, if they're not careful, faceplant into their dinners by 7pm. I'm starting to think that the general trend is to adjust your sleeping schedule while in this dark phase; I might start getting up at 5am, just to make full use of the daylight. We'll see. For now, I walk the streets with my hands in my pockets at 4pm, looking at the dark old buildings bursting with lamplight from the inside...

But with all cold and darkness of a Swedish winter also comes a wondrous onslaught of a very cozy winter social scene. Knitting lessons, collective studying, boardgames, movie nights, dinner parties. The dark seems to draw people to host get-togethers inside more often, and it's absolutely lovely. More opportunity for talking and finding out more about your friends; for discovering new hobbies and eating different foods; and for drinking a lot more wine, spirits, and beer. I'm telling you, there's nothing quite as good for numbed cheeks than entering a small, warm, brightly-lit Swedish flat---where the coat rack is literally sagging with jackets and there's a sprawling puddle of wet and gritty shoes before you. You can strip off your things, tuck them away, and slide in your socks over to the kitchen where someone pats you on the back, asks how you are, and gives you some hot wine in an IKEA cup.

Wonderful.

But either way, I'm going to Barcelona for New Year's. :)