Weather prompts memories

There’s something about extreme weather that prompts memories of extreme weather.
When we get as cold as we all did this month, inevitably the mind turns to the last time we were that cold.
That’s why I found myself writing a column last week about the frigid conditions back at Christmastime in 1983.
But I could have just as easily written about 2006.
It wasn’t unusually cold here in 2006, but it was in Moscow. And that’s where I was for much of February that year.
Now traveling to Moscow in February of any year makes about as much sense as going to Tampa in July, but in 2006 Russia’s winter was particularly brutal.
Temperatures were in the 25 to 30 below range when I arrived. That’s Celsius, but when the mercury gets a little bit lower there’s actually a place on the thermometer where Celsius and Fahrenheit converge.
I’d been asked by the International Center for Journalists and the New Eurasia Foundation to speak at a conference for small regional newspapers that were trying to operate independently of the government or political parties. After the conference, I was to leave Moscow for the hinterlands to consult with editors and publishers at three of the papers.
The cold that greeted me was bone-chilling. As bad as last week was, this was worse.
Fortunately, the cold wasn’t the only thing that greeted me. There was also a familiar face at the airport when I claimed my suitcase and cleared customs. It belonged to a guy named Dmitry Selok. Our paths had crossed in 2005 in Belarus.
Thanks to Dmitry, I was able to make my way through the frozen city to my hotel.
Movement outside was perilous. Even bundled up, we almost ran from place to place. Lingering outside was painful and could prove fatal.
But the hotel was warm, and the conference seemed to be productive for the participants. As long as you stayed indoors, you were okay.
Then it came time for the road trips.
The first was to a place called Zheleznogorsk in Kursk oblast. Getting there required taking the night train from Moscow, leaving in frigid darkness and arriving in equally frigid darkness the next morning.
Accompanied by an interpreter, I spent two days with the newspaper’s staff, working through a variety of problems.
Then it was back on the night train to Moscow for a day off before heading out again. This time, it involved a flight to Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains.
There, my interpreter and I traveled by car to a place called Artemovskii, arriving late at night. The only hotel in town was a shambles, so newspaper staff members put us up at their homes.
After two days of training and consultation, we got back in the car, traveling again at night to a mining city called Revda.
By then, winter had begun to moderate a bit. It was possible to walk around the downtown without shivering. Two days of training later, it was back to Yekaterinburg to catch a flight to Moscow.
This time, Moscow had warmed up as well. And with a day off, I could actually walk around the neighborhood near my hotel and see a few sights without endangering my life.
All the same, I was ready to get back home to Indiana where February was just February. After all, after the first half of my month, how bad could it be?[[In-content Ad]]