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Published: January 27th 2011
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People love to say it, I love to say it. In fact, it's the German word for
Oops! so Germans probably love it too. A friend of mine told me recently that they even like typing it. The fact is,
Uppsala has the rare and elusive double header of being a charming place with a lovely sounding name to go with it.
Very lovely place indeed, especially in winter, but more on the city itself later. Today we're focusing on snow which is an important part of Swedish winter as it's everywhere. And I love the snow.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Eskimos have 14 words to describe snow, and true or not, I always found that to be incredible. For an Australian who lives at least 3000 kilometres from the nearest snow, I figured one word would do. But as I have spent the past few weeks in sub-zero Uppsala, I have gradually begun to understand. I think I have found ten of the possible 14. Some quite legitimate, others perhaps far fetched creations, but all worth a moment's consideration. Shall we begin?
On the surface, there are your two basic varieties:
Wet and
Dry Snow. These are the most common and the most boring to describe, so I will get them out of the way first.
Even the most amateur snowballer can tell you that only the
Wet variety is any good for building and creating. Hans, an Uppsala resident and expert in answering snow related questions, told me the other day that the temperature had risen, the snow was wet, and it was the perfect day to throw snowballs. Wet snow is a child's snow, a winter enthusiast's snow, an Australian's snow, a snowman's snow. We built a rather fine example I thought. Yes, Wet snow is fun snow. My personal favourite.
The
Dry stuff is around when it gets colder, and it simply doesn't stick together due to its lower density. It is visually stunning, blows in the wind like confetti, and easy to shovel off the driveway. Don't even bother trying to make a snowball, you will be disappointed. Also known as Wispy snow.
Another type is what I like to call
Chocolate Snow. When we touched down into Stockholm on New Years Eve, the city was empty and unmoving. Everything was pure white. Imagine those commercials where
melted chocolate oozes over a biscuit, coating it entirely. You know what's under there, but all you can see is biscuit-shaped chocolate. Well, that's what it looked like as we were touching down, except the melted chocolate was actually fresh snow and the biscuit was Stockholm. From the plane it was amazing. You could see shapes of cars and bicycles, trees and park benches. Even the river had frozen over! People always say that snow 'blankets' things, but it doesn't. If you saw your bicycle under a blanket, you wouldn't even be sure it was a bicycle. If you saw it under snow, you'd know exactly what you were in for (a cold backside to begin with).
Next is
Rebel Snow, the punk-rocker of winter. This is a tricky one. Sometimes you look out the frosty windows and see snowflakes that aren't falling at all. No, they're rising into the air as if by some rebellious cosmic urge. I've been assured this is just the wind, but it's a pretty impressive sight either way. You never see rain going up.
My least favourite would be the
Snow of False Hope. Sometimes, when it hasn't snowed for a while,
Uppsala Water Tower at sunset
Junkie Snow on the side of the road a ripple of delight will pass over me when I glimpse the first flakes falling. Snowflakes, blessed, unique, perfect offerings from the heavens. I run outside, crouching to scoop it all up like cold silver treasure, only to find it's the Snow of False Hope, the type that melts upon impact. Incidentally, I think it's also many people's favourite kind of snow.
But, not all snow is good, which brings us to
Yellow Snow. As a child, I had heard the adage “Never eat yellow snow.” Not particularly relevant advice to a kid growing up in a sunburnt country, but there you go. The thing is, when it hasn't snowed for a while and when the old snow piles up on the sides of the footpaths, dogs mark their territories on every corner. Over and over again. It's kind of revolting. It makes you wonder about what the street corners are really like when there's no snow. (I know that's just a colour with the word snow next to it, but it counts as a category).
In fact, so does
Red Snow. This is a rare one. Authors love to go on about the striking image of blood
in the snow. I have seen it once. More on this next blog entry, but I won't go on and on about it, I promise (although it was indeed striking).
Junkie Snow is a filthy type, mostly found on the roadside, being avoided by pedestrians. It's a far cry from it's pure white brother, closer to black than white. It has been beaten by the system and has been piled up to die in its own foulness. I imagine it must have something to do with car exhausts and tyres, but the sides of the roads are pretty disgusting actually. In fact, it's best to avoid walking beside the road in winter unless it's been freshly snowing.
Some snow is even deadly and the most dangerous of all is
Sniper Snow. When the snow has been heavy or when the icicles are hanging, there are orange poles that get propped against the buildings next to footpaths. This warns pedestrians that there is Sniper Snow on a rooftop above that may silently kill you by its dislodgement if you're there at the wrong time. Or worse, you could be impaled by a kamikaze icicle. People actually die like this.
Lastly, there is
Survivor Snow, the most resilient of all varieties. It is the snow that outlasts all its ephemeral brothers, desperate to see a little bit of Spring or even Summer. It's survival instinct is high, often found in small piles, clinging to grit in a fairly shady place, looking inconspicuous so as to avoid the street sweepers and the grubby-fingered children looking for the last snowball of winter. It is a true survivor, but a doomed survivor.
That's right, doomed. All snow will eventually melt in Uppsala, and that's that. So while it's here, I am planning to embrace it, strapping on the skis whenever possible, and improving my snowball aim along the way.
I hope for those not familiar with snow that this has been an informative 5 minutes. For those experts among you, perhaps you could help me. You see, there are still at least four more types of snow out there. I'll leave you with that thought.
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Frostie
non-member comment
not bad for an Aussie
A good dissertation for someone with little or snow experience with this magical substance - as they say, "there's no business like snow business" and I guess this entry just goes to prove it