Snow and Faces

I am currently in Bucharest writing this from my blackberry. Forgive the poorly thought out ideas. Am blogging as best as I can from the comfort of my hotel bed in a country where the water is apparently brown sometimes.

Naively, I always had in my mind previously that the countries behind the former iron curtain were in some small way uniform. Obviously it had occurred to me that there were differences, but what I didn't expect to find was that the single, the only common thread that bound them during that era was communism. Ethnic, cultural, linguistic, historical diversity that was, apparently, repressed to varying degrees during that long era now manifests everywhere.

But the thing that has most surprised me quite possibly is the faces. Romanian faces seem to be vaguely mediterranean and I learned tonight that Romanian is a Latin derived language-closer to Spanish or Italian than it is to its at once close and distant slavic neigbours.

Bucharest is cloaked in snow right now and it is cold,but in an exciting rather than numbing way. People at work have been laughing at my (as it turns out) misplaced trepidation about how to cope with icy pavements and trudging through snow drifts.The truth is that here, unlike in England, they are accustomed to and thus prepared for snow. It makes it easier to cope with. Having borrowed an exquisitely cosy rabbit lined anorak from Frilly certainly helps. To the friends expressing their horror at my wearing of fur- a thought for you- try waiting for a cab in -12 without a fur and see how your opinion changes.... :-) Anyway, rabbits are pests.

I suspect I may have started a fire with that burst of capriciousness..!

Anyway. The snow is wonderful. As surprisingly is the freezing fog. I feel like a lock-jawed ninny staring glazed eyed from the taxi window at cars buried in snow, and like a cool-clime novice when I express surprise at aircraft casually parked on unnatural and abandoned angles aside the runway.

Could I live in it? Certainly not. But as a visitor whose time is made finite here by the prospect of snow on Thursday and the inflexible conditions of my return ticket, the snow is delicious.

As is the prospect of 8 uninterupted hours of sleep. Starting now.