Snow Days and Memories of Eastern Europe

Here it is 7:40 on a Tuesday morning in December and I am enjoying a cup of coffee, a delish muffin made by my daughter last night to give me a break from cooking breakfast this morning and a SILENT house.  All of this made possible by a snow day!  Yes, the forcast of 6-12 inches and 50 mph gusts by this afternoon have prompted the public schools to call off school for today.  When the kids wake up, they are going to be so excited!  Our district rarely cancels school so this is, indeed, a rare treat.

Right now the snow is coming down steadily.  In Nebraska the weather most often happens horizontally.  Due to an extreme and unfortunate lack of forestation in our fair state, the wind blows all the time.  Rain and snow come down sideways.  Not today, though.  The snow is falling straight down; silently.  This, coupled with the fact that it's just beginning to get light outside take me back to the day I left Sofia, Bulgaria with our son Christian.  It was snowing hard that day, too. 

It had already begun to snow when I awoke that morning and continued as a five-year-old Christian and I ate breakfast, washed up and packed our belongings into our luggage for our long journey home.  I was exhausted and he was.....I don't know what he was.  In a state of shock, maybe?  Scared witless?  Confused beyond belief?  All of the above.  When we were basically ready to go I turned on the little 12" television for him to watch cartoons and I sat at the little table in our flat and watched the snow out our 3rd floor window.

The snow always has a way of making everything seem so quiet and buffered and it had certainly done so with the noisy city of Sofia.  There didn't appear to be any fewer people walking to work or whereever they were off to, but they seemed to be moving with the 'mute' button on.  Our flat had a little balcony with a black iron railing and the snow had begun to pile up on it.  As I sat there the stack of snow got higher and higher and higher.  I began to wonder if our plane would leave and felt a little panicky.  Christian and I had not had the smoothest of bonding times thus far and I was really anxious to get home and have the support of our family.

Thankfully, we were finally picked up and taken to the airport and our plane did actually leave Bulgaria.  It was when we got to Warsaw, Poland to change planes that all the trouble began but that's an entirely different blog.

Days like this, where the snow falls silently but abundantly always take me back to my last day in Sofia with Christian.  To be perfectly honest, it's not really a happy memory, nor an unhappy memory; just a very strong memory. 

Which brings me to another strong memory.  This I mentioned on Facebook last week.  Was it last week?  Perhaps the week before.  I'm losing track.  Anyway, I mentioned how I'd been at the Post Office and parked beside a diesel truck and when I got out the cold air and the smell of the diesel fuel immediately made me cry.  I wanted to expand on that a little bit and I will try, although I'm not altogether positive I can explain it.

When we travelled to Russia, Rick and I flew through Frankfort, Germany in November.  The airports in Europe are not always like ours here in the United States.  In Germany (both in Frankfort and Munich), Vienna, Czech Republic, Poland and Russia they did not pull the aircraft up to a jetway and allow the passengers to walk in relative comfort and warmth into the terminal.  In all of those places, a set of steps was brought up to the airplane door and we walked down onto the tarmac and then into the terminal.  Rain, snow, dark of night; nothing kept us from our appointed trip across the tarmac.  We were like the US Postal Service. (note:  carrying a baby, an umbrella stroller and a backpack in the hard snow will get you waved up to the front of the line!)

Out on the tarmac there are all those little vehicles that pull open-sided wagons with luggage to and from the airplanes.  They always remind me of toys and I've always thought my boys would enjoy that particular profession of driving them.  There are fuel trucks that come and refuel the airplanes and the big trucks that bring the meals out to the planes.  Most of these vehicles are diesel; especially in Europe.  So the smell of diesel fuel coupled with COLD air always brings back strong memories of my adoption travels.

The strongest memory isn't even very well remembered.  I just sort of remember that Rick and I were sitting in the Frankfort airport (in blue plastic seats and there weren't very many people in our area and it seemed that all of them were from other countries than either the U.S. or Germany and most of them were reading newspapers that were oddly small and of interesting colors like pink and green and blue) and it was dark outside.  We were heading to Russia to pick up Ana and this was the only trip he took with me.  While we were waiting, forever it seemed, we watched all these little diesel vehicles zipping around.  Because it was so dark and we were inside looking through a wall of windows, I couldn't really see where they were going or what exactly they were doing but the smell of diesel was so strong it was almost overwhelming and it was COLD.

And then later in our trip, riding in the small Russian-made Lada car through the streets of Moscow.  Rick's knees were up to his ears since he didn't fit too well in the car.  Moscow was surely not designed to support the vast number of vehicles on the roadways now and they are a nightmare to say the least.  The transport trucks (what we would call a semi, only they were smaller and shaped differently) and the military vehicles were just tall enough for their exhaust pipe to direct the noxious fumes directly into our car windows.  Overwhelming diesel smell and COLD air.

And later on yet, after 27 hours on the Trans-Siberian Railway we arrived in Ekaterinburg.  Instead of the train pulling up to a platform so we could disembark, it simply stopped.  We got out with our luggage (which included two huge boxes of coats, hat, gloves, etc. for the orphanage and a joy to carry!) and walked across 4 more sets of tracks....in the dark....and the cold...with the overwhelming smell of diesel fuel.

So, I guess I'm not exactly sure what it is about the smell of diesel fuel in the cold air that makes me cry.  Our trip wasn't bad at all.  In fact, it was wonderful!  Rick was with me ( I went to Bulgaria solo five times) and we brought home our beautiful daughter, Ana.  But, I guess it was stressful.  Rick had never travelled out of the country before and he was a little shell-shocked.  The culture is vastly different from our own and of course, the language barrier is incredibly isolating.  I think it's just all of it.  All of those crazy strong emotions of excitement, fear, confusion, love, adventure, missing the kids at home, etc. all rolled up into the smell of diesel fuel in the cold air.  It makes me cry every time.

Well, my little nirvana has ended.  Kids are up, Rick is sitting on the couch beside me and talking on the phone (could he not find somewhere else to do this?) and the day has begun.  Guess I'll go outside and shovel up some of that beautiful snow.