Earlier in my semester abroad, I would have used all kinds of interesting adjectives to describe St. Petersburg, Russia: colorful, animated, vivacious, diverse, unflinching, exquisite. Now only one adjective is on my mind: cold. So fucking cold.
Nashvillians and Vanderbilters, love and treasure your weather. Write poems to it, bring it flowers on its birthday, tell it those jeans make it look great, and hold a radio over your head beneath its window when you’ve hurt its feelings. You are so lucky to have it.
Right now in St. Petersburg it is -6 degrees F. That is really flipping cold.
Luckily, Russians have perfected the art of bundling up. On any given day, one can only see between nose tip and brow line of anyone walking on the street. Otherwise, everything is covered. Now what material is it that Russians drape themselves with? Fur. Every day my ride on the metro is like going to the zoo. “Oh, look, 20 baby foxes! Oh a couple of chinchillas! Oh no!! Thumper!” My host mom has one of my favorite coats that I have seen thus far — fur hood and fur cuffs on a black leather coat that has fake leopard print panels across the body. Hot. Stereotyped ‘Vandy Girls’ that this newspaper likes to mock—take notes.
Other wonderful images: one woman had a fox complete with paws and head draped around her head, another donned a bright purple knee-length fur coat and lastly, the multi-animal coat, a long fur coat that was been clearly made from several different animals, each roughly patched together.
Luckily, the cold weather brings with it some perks. Most notably—SNOW! St. Petersburg has been covered in a sparkly white blanket of deceptively friendly-looking snow for a little over 2 weeks now. Although it is a pain to trudge through and Russians don’t seem to believe in shoveling sidewalks and plowing roads with as much vivacity as Americans do, I do love the snow. Mainly because it makes the days seem so much brighter. St. Petersburg is very far north and is famous for a week in the summer where the sun never sets and the whole city parties—appropriately named “White Nights.” Unfortunately, for a city to have “White Nights” at some point in the year it must also suffer through “Dark Days.” The year is drawing painfully near to this time and by the time I leave for the US the sun will already be rising at 10 am. As is, with 2 weeks still left, the sun rises at 9:30 A.M. and sets around 4 P.M.
Lastly, really cold temperatures mean really cold water—and that means ice. Every year, falling icicles kill people in St. Petersburg. Seriously. Luckily, the city has developed an ingenious way of dealing with the problem. Every day, teams of men go out, climb up on roofs, and knock down the icicles. Unfortunately for us below, this is only usually signaled by a thin bit of red tape that the workers drape across a far-too-small space around where they estimate the ice will fall. The only real indication that ice shanks are going to rain down on you are the ice shanks themselves—and by then it’s kind of late. Of course, since they are pretty good about getting icicles down before they get really big, it’s usually Swiss army knives raining down, not cleavers. Getting hit in the head with one would probably just cause a concussion—not death. The other day not only did icicles almost hit me, but then the contractor dropped the pick he was working with and that almost hit someone too. In general, people just learn to walk on the edge of the sidewalks, away from any overhangs.
So Nashvillians, rejoice. It may be rainy and chilly there, but an umbrella and a Northface pretty much suffice.
The Hunt for Cold December: Meryem’s Theory-ems
Wacky Weather Threatens Vanderbilt
Since the start of the semester, Nashville has been ravaged by cold temperatures and unusual amounts of snow. So far, the weather has been received less warmly than a Holocaust joke at a Bar-mitzvah or than a clown anywhere.
After The Weekend Snowstorm of 2010 (you all know what I am referring to), Nashville and the Vanderbubble woke up to nearly six inches of snow on the ground. All life in the city of Nashville froze for almost three days straight (no pun intended). Whether it was the extreme cold or the complete lack of any snow plows whatsoever, everything shut down from Friday to Sunday, including Vanderbilt’s Vandy Van service. “No Vandy Vans! God, why have you forsaken me?!” a freshman was heard screaming outside the Commons Center.
The lack of Vandy Vans combined with the sissyness of Vanderbilt students caused Greek Row to nearly shut down for the weekend. One frat-star recounted, “It was like a ghost-town in the Wild West except it was covered in snow and most of the houses were in worse shape.”
There were a few brave souls who managed to venture outside into the Great White Mess. One student noted that it was “frostier than A.J. Ogilvy’s hair tips” outside. Snowball fights, snowman building, and failed attempts at sledding could all be seen around campus. Several groups decided to play games of tackle football in the snow, to which shivering bystanders yelled encouraging cheers such as “Idiots!”, “I hope you get frostbite!”, and “Why am I still standing out here yelling things?”
For some students, it was one of the few times they had ever seen snow. A Floridian was seen running in circles saying, “Oh my God, snow. Oh my God, snow. Oh my God, snow. Oh my God, snow.” A New Jerseyan looked on in disgust. “I left the North primarily to get away from the snow,” he said. “Well, that and to get away from my parents.”
When the snow started falling in the wee hours of Friday morning, many students had hoped that Vanderbilt would cancel school for the day. Unfortunately, school continued as planned. Chancellor Nick Zeppos stated, “Come on people, suck it up. I went to school in Wisconsin for God’s sake! This is nothing. I used to have to walk to class in two feet of snow. Uphill. Both ways. Madison had some weird hills…”
