I got chills, they are multiplying

So as I type this, the temperature outside is -13.3C. Normally around the January/February changing of the months it is the coldest in Warsaw. This year with the very mild winter we have had then plunging into the double figures of minus temperature has been a really huge shock. If you are ever interested in the weather in little old Warsaw then you can check it here, at the website of the technical university. It updates every 5 minutes and, being technical boffins, I am sure they are accurate.

So with all this coldness about I thought it was time to show some photos that reflected this.

Frosty trees

Frosty bits

Frosty tips

Frosty twigs

Frosty tips

ok I am running out of rhyming things - Frost

Frosting points

spikey sticky

Spiken and Lichen

Everything will be all white

Setting sun

All blue

Will it be the end of winter?

And the Stroll Home.

After a lovely day of drifting about in fantastic winter sun, then guzzling down coffee and cake, all in the Near Vistula area of Warsaw, it was time to head to the Metro and home. The problem for Marty, no matter how cold, hungry, thirsty, bursting for the bathroom or bored she is, photography still manages to distract me. Especially when the sun is getting low and soft making great long shadows and dragging my eye from one scene to another. I do honestly wonder why she comes out on walks with me sometimes. I know that when on holidays, I am always worried about losing her, as I do put my head down and chase photos regularly or goof around trying to get the image right or just wondering about something I see.

So I got distracted here by the sharp like and sharper shadows.
I love when light plays tricks on your mind. Like here making you think that the light is on while it is just the sunlight.
To make the boss happy, I made her look movie starlike, and she decided to ignore me as any good movie star would.
Then we get to a favourite corner to people watch, Ulice Swietokrzyska and Nowy Swiat. Nice burst of sunlight and some long loping giantesque shadows.
Then when I totter over to the Western side you get to see some nice architecture and I can hide in the dark shadows.
So I can take photos of girls in Grannylike jackets smoking at crossings.
Then I decide to run further up the street and hide in more shadows while people squint into the sunshine and I snap away freely.
Then we see a couple of old friends, Mr Palace and Miss National Bank.
The latter home to the classical Wonky Windows photo from a few years ago. I thought I would have another try.
Then, in a science fiction styled twist, we are attacked by the eye of the Intercontinental, run my children, head for the underground.
Of course on the way to the Metro, I needed to stop at the lights, so why not take a photo of Polish winter fashions.....
Or Just grannies with really strange hats and looking like they are holding hands? Either way, we must run to the Metro to escape! Run!

The Beauty of the Winter and the North East

I think sometimes human words are irrelevant, especially when it comes to the beauty of nature. Marty and I often talk about life and what it will hold for us in the future. Being people who speak multiple languages, albeit mine aren't great, we think and dream about what to do as we have a great thing called choice now.

We love that the world is so "easy" to travel around, and that there are so many options open to us. But, there is always a but, we never know what to do, we are, as the saying goes "spoilt for choice".

Almost all of my students and most everyone I meet in Poland will ask "Why are you here? You could be in Australia in the sun!", I laugh and tell them, "I actually like Poland! Its seasons, its people, and its food." They all think I am "A crazy Australian!" and shake their collective heads. When my family came here for my recent wedding my father repeated ad nauseum that "Poland is nice, but how can you live in such cold conditions, the weather is horrid", he would remind me every time I saw him. His other favourite saying was "I feel like a Christmas turkey in all these layers of clothes".

However, if we are ever to leave Poland, I think one of the things I would miss most of all is indeed the weather. It would be very hard to leave the snow behind. I know it is cold, wet, numbing, almost painful and hence horrid when you are waiting for a tram, or walking somewhere before the paths have been cleaned. That is something Polish people (and me at times) forget, that the paths are labouriously cleaned by the amazing people of the city of Warsaw. I still wonder how they survive out there for hours at a time cleaning snow from footpaths, roads, and transport stops. Sometimes feeling, like it is as my father-in-law said to me at Christmas, after I had done my shovelling duty for an hour and a half, "impossible to beat the weather. Winter always wins".

That said to me, the winter is gorgeous, the air is crystalline, it is almost tasty because it is so clean. I love it when you get a little whiff of someone's wood fire burning as you stroll about town or in Sokolka when I am out with the camera. I am still a huge kiddy at heart and get great pleasure out of seeing my own breath emanate from my mouth, I make snow balls while I wait for the tram. I love the cracking of ice underneath a layer of snow when we have had a little thaw. I also love not having a car so I can look at the ice formations on windscreens, as I trot through the snow to work, with a sense of wonder and enjoyment rather than thinking about having to scrape it off myself as in England, when I would curse frost for putting me a whole massive 5 minutes behind schedule. Something that really, in the grand scheme of things, is irrelevant, but at the time when you have numb fingers and 6 windows to clear seems like some sort of world-stopping event.

So this post is a tribute to Winter, my frigid cold mistress. She loves me in her own way, she loves to envelop me in her tentacle-like arms when I am up early in the morning going to the far side of the city. She loves to tickle me under the chin, if I forget to do my scarf up high enough and she will hold my hand till it turns blue, if I forget my gloves. But, I know why. She does this so that I don't forget her and take her for granted. So that I appreciate her for what she is. Lady Winter, my mistress of the start and end of each year, is the one that prepares me for the explosion of Lady Spring who makes my eyes water with her pollens. She gives me a contrasting comparison for the sweaty Miss Summer who will make me sweat and laugh at me for having to wear jeans or long pants (trousers for you UK based people) to work. She is also the result of Granny Autumn who teases my eyes with colour and her bountiful natural foods.

The sky in Winter when clear is freezing, but stunning. I'll trade numb fingers for this easily!
I love how we many people leave the apples on the tree through winter, some say it is because they are a great fertilizer when they fall in spring others know it is just about being lazy.
Mistletoe, the predator of the North East.
Mistletoe up close.
Without electricity, many would be in dire trouble come winter.
Contrasts are what winter is all about.
I am "hooked" on winter. Sorry, horrible pun.

A little sun and we get some thaw.
A little thaw can quickly turn into a river.
Crisp and clean snow melt.
Birch and the lichen that are common here.
The home grove.
Country cats love climbing trees, they only need firemen to save them in the city.
It is hard to see, but the tree is actually sweating!
Clear skies and cat tracks.
Little house on the praire, or at least in the snow.
The crispness of sun and snow is fabulous, but can be a challenge to photograph with so much brighness.
After running around outside for so long I had to come in for a coffee and to sit by the fire. I just admired it from the window for the rest of the day, I might love the colour, the crisp, the clairity, the pristine nature of snow and ice. But, at the end of it all, I still like being warm.

So where do I start now?

Next number at window A is 2010, 2010, does anyone know where 2010 is? Oh yeah, just around the corner!
About time to light a new year candle.

So Christmas has now come and gone, and there is another year sneaking up on me around the corner. Yet I still have photos that I haven't even looked at from Summer, Autumn and I even found some from Spring! That is a little scary, actually, it is very scary.

For all those in other locations who have been eagerly awaiting some photos of a white Christmas, your Christmas has been cancelled! Alas, there is none for you this year, maybe you need to be better? We had a fantastic covering of snow two days before the big day, but on the day in question, it rained and rained and rained and rained. For a little while on Christmas Eve day, I was thinking on my wish list I should have asked for an Ark. Then I realised I don't like animals in twos, anyway this rain washed away the majority of the snow. So instead of making snow angels, Snow men and losing an eye to a snow ball fight, I had to content myself cooking.
Mistletow was abound though (thanks to Marty who took this great photo)
Christmas in Poland is THE biggest event of the year. Most of the country lives for it. Except maybe the Orthodox and the Tatars. It was funny to hear many of my students complain about the complete commercialisation of Christmas, but from what I have seen it doesn't touch Australia, the US or the UK. Not even close.

Poland still maintains many traditions around this time, some that may even appear to be heavy and burdensome and maybe slightly cruel. Of this I will speak more of later. Firstly some basics:

- The Poles focus their celebration on Christmas Eve, not on Christmas Day, as we do back home.
- They serve 12 different dishes on this night, some people include salt and pepper as a dish to save on cooking.
- No meat is eaten, and in the strictly Catholic families, no one is allowed to drink either (this is part of the cruelty!)
- Passages are read from the Bible before you start the meal, and wishes are given to each individual at the meal.
- The preference for fish is either Northern Herring or buying live Carp as one of the main meals (not eaten live but just bought live)
- The Christmas tree is decorated only on Christmas Eve Day
- And many people attend church services on CED, especially at midnight.

I was lucky enough not to have to kill the carp, as they are notoriously hard to knock off, also I skipped out on church. I did get the chance to give everyone best wishes, eat at least 12 dishes, have a celebratory drink, and decorate the tree. So overall, I think I must have been about a 50% Pole for the day. But I tried to be in the kitchen all day chopping and roasting and baking to make sure that all were fed.

We cooked up some lovely food as our 12 dishes. They were:
Firstly the ones I didn't photographt (or photograph well)
- Pickled Herring in onion and vinegar
- Fresh pickled cucumbers
- Boiled vegetables, pickles and egg salad
- Dark chocolate cake with marinated plums and vanilla cream mousse
- Kompot (a drink made from dried fruit that are boiled for some time)
- Smoked salmon on bread with a horseradish, chive, cream and garlic sauce

- Carp roasted with a mushroom sauce
- Roasted Tench (another freshwater fish)
- Roasted herb potatoes
- Fish Greek style
- Tortellini salad
- Beetroot and Herring salad
- Fried butterfish
- Barszcz (beetroot soup) with uszka, or little ears (tortellini-shaped dumplings with cabbage and sauerkraut).
- A Gingerbread house

The end result.
So we demolished most of the above that evening. Not too bad for 8 people, one of which is 3 years old! He did the most of his damage to the Gingerbread house, or as he called it domek, or little house. Sebastian lining up his first attack on the structure of the house.
Marty analysing the damaged parts.
During the battle the Santa near the chimney ended up being a casualty.
We think that building a house will be a new tradition for Marty and me (not that Sebastian agrees here), to build a different house each year and keep a record of it (probably just a photographic record) and change the design each year. This was the first time I had ever made one, so I am pretty happy with the end result.

This year Marta designed it, I baked it and a team of Marty, me, her mum and her brother all decorated it with
smarties, malteasers, chocolate wafers for tiles and shutters, and melted dark to help stick it together and white chocolate around the place as glue and faux snow. Not to forget an army of chocolate Santas to guard it.

So this was the Christmas Eve..... Then there was Christmas day where I made scones in the morning for the family for the first time ever, and then cooked a turkey as well. I stuffed it with breadcrumbs, garlic, apple, ham, onion, pig fat, herbs, salt and pepper and of course some water to bind it all together. This was the first time the family had roasted a whole turkey ever. So once cooked, I made gravy from its juices where I also roasted some potatoes. It went down a treat. I think it will be a new tradition..... maybe, unless we decide on goose next year!
Thanks for reading this year. I hope I can keep you interested enough to continue to read me in the new decade that starts in just over 24 hours!