Slippery as ice

Robert by one of the many collapse warning signs around the city. Just now, you can't simply try to avoid the ice on the ground, you also have to worry about what could fall on you from above.

Stockholm has become a giant skating rink. Last night, it began snowing again but then it turned to rain by morning as temperatures warmed up. The rain turned all the firmly packed snow on the sidewalks and roads into a solid sheet of rough and bumpy ice with a layer of water on top. It’s impossible to walk on. Instead, you are forced into a cautious baby step prance, hoping that you don’t fall as you watch everyone around you sliding and slipping and doing the same ridiculous walk.

“This is crazy,” I grumbled to Robert as we made our way to the grocery as I slipped again and found myself in a giant skating rink area with nothing to hold on to and people all around me losing their traction and weaving. “There needs to be salt out to melt this stuff. This wouldn’t have happened if the snow had been shoveled off the sidewalks in the first place. What do we pay our taxes for anyway?” I was full on pissed off, mostly because I was scared. Then I noticed Robert was deliberately running and slidding on the ice.

“I think it’s great outside,” was his reply.

“That’s because you are crazy.” But he had a point. He was not at all afraid of falling, while I was definitely terrified of doing so. And then we saw a huge slab of ice fall from the top of a building and land on the sidewalk just in front of us. Quickly, we both moved into the center of the street and kept walking, me wishing that I had stayed at home.  It’s days like these when I miss the US and shoveled and salted sidewalks.

Tagged as: winter in Stockholm