Yesterday I'd been studying with some classmates at the university. I went home around 16.00, it was fairly cold and snowing but nothing special. Four hours later I was going to head to my friend who lives about 2 km away from my place. No problem to walk that distance, only 15 minutes or so and I'd have company with another friend from Nacksta. Well, no problem is what I thought.
It was a true snowstorm, the wind was biting at our faces and it was snowing insanely. Earlier there had been a bit of snow on the sidewalk, now it was hard to distinguish road from sidewalk at times. We did manage to make our way there without any accidents but we got quite tough. Oh well, at least I'd have the wind in my back when I headed back home.
Five hours later I left my friends house and headed home again. My friend who had kept me company on the way there decided to take a cab. I like walking alone and singing to myself. Pride might also have played a part, I didn't want to let a little snow scare me, norrland - northern Sweden - wouldn't beat me that easily and after all the snow had only come today, how much could it be? Perhaps I was naive not to realise that the snowstorm hadn't ceased in strength during my entire stay.
I wrote earlier that it was hard to distinguish road from sidewalk at times. Well, now I could only dream of even seeing the sidewalk. Every step made me sink down into the snow, the only way of being on the sidewalk was to walk far away from the road, which I did. After a while it got even worse, the road had been plowed and all the snow was now on the sidewalk, meter thick. It was quite bad until I got a great idea. That the snow had been plown up on the sidewalk made it deeper and even harder to walk in. So how about walking on it?
The snow had been quite compressed and hard, I couldn't really see it but that's the way it usually is when snow is plown of the street onto the sidewalk. I simply picked the highest spot on the snow and stepped on it, hard. That way my way home got a lot easier, except for the two times that I stepped through it and sank down 30 centimeters or so.
It felt like a quite long walk but it actually didn't take very long. I arrived at home literally ten seconds after my friend who called a cab, guess it took the cab quite some time. A cab might have been more comfortable for me too, but I am pretty sure that I was happier to finally get home than my friend was. If I will walk the next time? I'm not sure, we'll see about that when next time comes. If it's worse I'll probably call a cab, and it might actually be worse as it's been snowing today too. The weather forecast also predicts stormy weather with a lot of snow for the coming week, this will sure be intresting.
Good night from a snowy Sundsvall :)
The picture below is in front of the door to my place, it was clear at 20.00 as it is under roof and had been protected from the snow. This snow had just blown in from the side in six hours.