I usually sleep with my window open. Yesterday morning, my nose and ears felt a bit numb. No wonder, the temperature had fallen well below the minus twenties during a clear night, passing into a beautiful morning. As I was eating my breakfast, around 7.30, all was quiet as the first rays of the sun started to illuminate house roofs. Soon I heard the first ferryboat laboring, with a crunching sound, through the ice across Hammarby Sound (Hammarby Sjö). Gradually tug boats started to join in, going towards Lake Mälar (Mälaren). A larger one, pushing a snowy barge ahead of it, parted in the opposite direction towards the sea.
Rarely do we experience such a harsh winter in Stockholm nowadays. It started to snow when I returned from the Canaries on 19 December and it has snowed off and on ever since. We have to go back twenty years in time to recall similar hardships. So I put the marvelous scene on record, not sure whether I would experience it again in my lifetime.
PS: The comments below are actually responses to an e-mail I sent to family and friends February last, with the picture and text I have replicated in the present post. DS
PS: The comments below are actually responses to an e-mail I sent to family and friends February last, with the picture and text I have replicated in the present post. DS
