A post in which it is obvious that I am English

Guess what?

(I'll have you know that these photos were taken at about 11am. It was snowing and really was that dark, has been like this for days. Continued snowing for quite a while as well. Above is the garden. Below, the view from the front door - when I say we live next to a mosque, you can see that we really do live right next door to a mosque... and have grown to love the call to prayer, even at 5am!)

IT SNOWED! And not a light namby pamby dusting of snow either. There's a good foot and a half on the ground and that was from one day of snowing. The forecast for today: Heavy snow. Tomorrow? Heavy snow. Friday? Heavy Snow. That's a whole lot of snow coming our way.

.

Being British and therefore not used to snow, I find this fantastically exciting. It looks so pretty! It is proper white fluffy snow, a powder dream for a skier and a snow ball dream for small boys. Although getting ready to go out is a real palaver, what with waterproof trousers, hats, scarves, gloves, snow boots and all, the boys want to spend all afternoon outdoors. So it is snowmen, sledging, snow balls and glowing red cheeks for us all the way. When they tire of that there is always a path that needs clearing or snow to be swept off the car, activities that could have been invented especially for small boys. And there I was thinking what was I going to do with them all winter.

.

The Bosnians are not so keen on the snow. They walk around huddled darkly in their coats, hands thrust deep into their pockets, muttering 'zima' (winter) and tsking. They know that snow is a total nightmare in reality. The roads are treacherous, the walkways become ice rinks and it is going to get COLD (max temp forecast for Friday, a balmy -6C). Their kids love it as much as mine do, there were a whole load of them going to nursery on sledges this morning, but the adults know that snow looks pretty for about a whole day before it just becomes a wet, cold misery.

.

They know how to deal with it though. There may have been 2 foot or so of snow, but all the buses were out this morning (as opposed to London's efforts in the snow fall last year), every single car has got winter tyres on (by law) and Tuzla, being the city built on salt mines, is never ever going to run out of grit to salt the roads with.

.

No doubt, by the end of the week when we are totally snowed in and the boys are bored of being wet and cold, I'll be fed up with it too. But right now, I'm loving it for being so pretty, so Christmassy, so indisputably winter.

.

(ps sorry about the lack of gaps between paragraphs, Blogger being a pain and not letting me do it and I've got bored of trying to make it...)