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I grew up in the northen parts of Scandinavia and i now live in central Europe. My theory is that how much you would enjoy winter is strongly correlated with th
by thecopy 6y ago
I grew up in the northen parts of Scandinavia and i now live in central Europe. My theory is that how much you would enjoy winter is strongly correlated with the quality of the winter. The more south you go, and the more urban you go, the worse the winter is.
Living semi-rurally in a cold place is a good predictor for a good winter experience. In the cities, especially southern citites, it is worse. Slush, gravel, dark snow, rain, wet everywhere. And public transport is full of people with big jackets taking up too much space.
It is easy to have a mindset geared toward enjoying winter when that winter acutally has the possbility of being enjoyable. In a rainy cold dark urban center, not much so.
- hedberg10 6y agoIt's not big jackets. It's the jacket etiquette. You must take the jacket off, otherwise it'll be too warm with all the people crammed in there and you will sweat, essentially making the climate in the car worse & smelly, then going outside where you'll get sick, since you're now wet. I don't get why people choose to suffer. I will wake up at 5 to avoid that and the masses on public transport if I actually have to go to the office.
- vonmoltke 6y agoSo replace "full of people with big jackets taking up too much space" with "full of people bumping into you putting on and taking off big jackets in a confined space". Either way it's a miserable experience.
- luckylion 6y ago> Slush, gravel, dark snow, rain, wet everywhere. I agree. If winter just means "it's dark, the sky is grey all the time, it's cold and the ground is mushy", it sucks. When it's cold with blue skies, sun is shining and the ground is frozen white, it's much nicer and much more tolerable.
- jjkaczor 6y agoHaving spent time in various winter locations in Canada, I found... -35c in Iqaluit? Or northern Alberta? Cold, but actually enjoyable. (Admittedly, that changes during extreme winds or blizzard conditions) -15c in Ontario? Frigid, slushy and nasty. The difference - many northern regions are actually considered desert climate zones due to the low humidity. However - extreme cold can be a bit more dangerous as without that humidity, people may not cover the tips of their nose/ears properly (if a newbie), so - those can get frost-bite more often than in southern regions.
- nicbou 6y agoI liked winters in northern Quebec a lot more than in Berlin. At least it was an actual season and not a more miserable version of summer.
- jamil7 6y agoThis has been my experience as well. Drier Scandinavian winters I experienced (one as low as -25C) felt easier to deal with than the constant damp, grey central Europe winters I live through now.
- Dahoon 6y agoIt does sound logical but as someone living in Denmark I can attest that it would have to be pretty far north. Winter in Denmark is almost always grey and rainy and little snow.
- ajkdhcb2 6y agoExactly, I started writing exactly the same thing before I saw your comment, and I lived above the arctic circle for a while. The article relies on false logic that winter is 'worse' the further north you go, but can be the opposite... Snow, northern lights, forests vs tiny expensive apartments in icy raining city...
- kurthr 6y agoI've only ever spent time in (smaller) cities (Reykjavik, Gothenburg) during the winter and I have to say that with the sun very low even during the day SNOW was what made it bearable. The light (even street lights) reflecting off fresh white snow made it much brighter during daylight and less dismal even at night. This was made clear when I arrived in the afternoon just before a snow and began to despair arriving at a hotel, but woke to fresh snow in the morning and enjoyed quite a long day even into evening walking home through well lit white streets.