Winter has been having fun in Hungary, and the rest of Eastern and Southern Europe. I’m sure some of you have got bits of news on the extreme weather many countries near us have been having. Szeged has not been immune, and we’re crawling out of 4 days of snow and frigid cold temperatures. As someone with lots of cold and snowy places in my background (Big Bear, CA, Maine, Colorado), it has been easy for me to scoff. But to put it into perspective, the last time Szeged had to use their two big snow removal machines was in 2003. They get dustings and maybe a few inches at a time, not over a foot. And so while our family has been shrugging off the ‘little bit of snow’, the kids’ friends were talking of nothing but how ‘crazy’ the snow is. The city basically shut down over the weekend, and had the schools closed for both Monday and Tuesday. We’re rather used to ‘snow days’, but it sounds like they are an unheard of event here, another indicator of how serious the weather has been. They also do not have the means to handle the snow, with very few snow plows (if you only need them once every 10 years, why buy a lot?), so the roads have stayed very bad in town. We rode a bus on Monday to get groceries, and it was one of the scariest 20 minutes of my recent memory. The trams have been less scary, but can also have a hard time braking. Walking is so healthy, even in this cold air. Ah, nice, brisk walks, yes, that’s my choice right now!
I’ll also take this chance to share some pictures, because, it really is beautiful – and who knows when it’ll be this ‘crazy’ here again!
From snowy Szeged – stay warm dear friends…
lakatosfamily 