Saying Goodbye to Omsk

Our winter is finally winding down.  It is not quite spring yet, but it's so close you can actually see it coming.   As I write this it is a bright sunny day in Espoo, Finland and a spring snow flurry is passing by outside - five minutes of dark violent blizzard-like snow sent in from the Gulf of Finland and then an hour of bright sun.  It's lovely.  We are currently in a suburb of Helsinki awaiting new visas from the Russian embassy.  In Finland, you ride public transportation for free if you have a stroller with you.  It turns out that the government here is trying to pass a law making it mandatory for fathers to take a 6 month paternity leave (and that is after the mother has already taken a 6 month leave).  Then mom and dad decide who takes the final 6 month leave - totaling a year-and-a-half of paid leave.  Interesting.  Finns seem to have a happy and content demeanor.  I wonder why?  We will spend a few weeks in Finland and then we can officially get back to Russia in early April.  We will spend the remainder of our time in St. Petersburg.

We said goodbye to our Omsk home and friends last week.  It was hard leaving.  We had a very good experience in Omsk, albeit a long and cold winter.  We will miss the dear friends we made there.  The fur coats (and stilettos) are still out in full force in Siberia.  Our Omsk friends will have a few more weeks of frigid temps, but in April things should start to thaw.  There were some days where it was just too dangerous to go outside with the girls this winter - those days we opted for baking cookies or making crafts - all the while watching out the window as brave souls carried on everyday life.  One time when I went out to run an errand by myself it was so cold that the metal clasp on my purse actually burned my skin even after sitting on the bus for five minutes (a testament both to how cold it really is here, and how well the buses are heated).  David took a research trip to Irkutsk, a city further east and very close to lake Baikal where he experienced an extreme -39C one night (that's about the point where C and F meet by-the-way).  Crazy.  Still, David saw a man carrying water buckets to fill at an outside pump even in those temps.

But, the extreme cold also brings a sort of natural beauty that you can only experience if you're willing to be right there, in the coldest of colds.    I'm talking about those days where it's so frigid out that any moisture in the air gets trapped in the form of tiny floating ice crystals which adhere to any and every branch or blade of grass during the night.  You wake up to an unforgettable winter wonder land.  In Omsk, most days are sunny and so the tiny crystals left floating in the air transport you to a dream world.  I've only experienced this type of beauty in North Dakota, where it does get just as cold as Omsk.  

Our down jackets pulled it off, though, and our boots lasted all winter.  All-in-all, we are well and looking forward to spending the next three months in beautiful St. Petersburg, our other home-away-from-home.  We will even get to experience the "White Nights" of Petersburg, with sunlight 24-hours a day in June (we'll be as far north as Anchorage, Alaska.)   

After the winter, I don't think I'll mind those sun-filled days one bit.