Three more school-less days! This week we have a "cold vacation," presumably since the school district can't properly claim a flu epidemic like much of the rest of the country. So there were no classes yesterday, there were no classes today, and there will be no classes tomorrow. All because of a dubious claim that temperatures hit -20 C Tuesday night, thus presenting some kind of safety hazard to the children of Silistra.
Really, it's a money issue. There's no way they can run the schools' heating systems when the buildings leak like collanders, so they allow a couple of weeks here and there in the winter for vacations. It's a small part of the reason why the school year runs from September to July. Last year, there was no need for vacation, just a half-day here and there, so the students got some extra education. But this year, the winter has suddenly gotten to a point that could, in some circles, be called cold. It doesn't justify the running around and hand-wringing a lot of people here seem to be doing, but it is cold, I suppose.
That cold has left the River partially frozen, and with that and the snow-covered park, I don't think the riverside has ever looked so beautiful. Walking to the internet club, I decided to detour through the park and take a look at the ice floes. It was hypnotic. They float down the river at a few miles per hour and as the larger ones hit the smaller ones they make a brittle, creaking, breaking sound that's just quiet enough to make a constant and pleasant white noise. As the sun set over the river, the whole thing looked like a well-made tequila sunrise on the rocks, with the odd shade of purple thrown in for variety. I didn't have my camera, but most of the effect came from the movement and sound, so a still wouldn't cut it anyway.
The river freezing is just one more sign that Bulgaria is using to claim that it is very, very cold. Despite all evidence to the fact that it is only "cold," Bulgarian news programs are regularly claiming temperatures in the Silistra area to be in the low minus twenties Celsius. A town in central Bulgaria allegedly set a record at -34 C, which is absolute lunacy if you just stick your head out the window, read a thermometer, or read weather reports from non-Bulgarian news. The thermometers around Silistra (and there are two very public thermometers) have never shown me anything lower than -8 C, which may be cold, but isn't even booger-freezing cold, a necessary factor in any determination of cold. Still, it's -8 C, so I'm not exactly shooting hoops outside.
But the apartment's warm! And that leaves me plenty of time to read Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, which has been sitting on my bookshelf, looking impressive, since I picked it up from the volunteer library last year. I've never read Pynchon before, and so, after reading 100 pages, I was very, very surprised. It's dense, sure enough, but also incredibly pleasant, often funny, and in every way like reading page after page of the weirdest dream I've ever had. It's something Terry Gilliam would write if he were a good novel writer and decided to gun for a 770 page tome. Post-modernism at its best. And I'm only on page 200. I've never had so much fun reading a book I knew would be good for me.
So, the glorious winter service continues. Long days spent reading with a cat on my stomach, long nights in cafes discussing the pros and cons of America and Bulgaria and every country in between. And occasionally, I teach.
Posted by Rob at February 10, 2005 07:39 PM