But Saturday was quite possibly the warmest day yet, and it might even have hit fifty (Fahrenheit - I'm switching back and forth between Imperial and metric units with no rhyme or reason these days). Most of the snow from the day before melted, and it was almost balmy outside. The past two days have been warm as well, and the city has really been transformed. I really didn't know what the city would look like without snow when I got here, and, well... there's more streets covered with pebbles than gold. You can actually see where the bicycles are supposed to be and where the pedestrians are supposed to be, whereas you didn't even know that there were separate bicycle and pedestrian lanes in the winter in most places, and where you did it was only because there were signs. And the city looks similar enough that I didn't get lost because of the lack of snow. So, in short, a big transformation but not one that made the city look stunning. Which is probably in part because parts of the city are still in the yucky slushy phase.
It also seems really weird in a way to not have the ground covered in snow. After two months of having snow everywhere, it just kind of becomes ingrained that the ground is covered in snow. You know intellectually that the snow will melt eventually, unless The Day After Tomorrow becomes reality, but it's just part of life that the snow is there. And then in a relatively short period of time, it isn't. It's weird. I'm used to walking on ice now, and now there's hardly any ice to walk on. Our offroad back-path to Ica is still covered in ice, but even that, the most famous of ice paths in the Flogsta area, is showing definite signs of stress from the heat. Who knows, I might learn that it isn't actually an offroad path but there's actually pavement underneath after all in the next few days.
So, with only a few weeks left in winter, I've managed to fall on the ice only twice. Once with not even a flesh wound, and the other leaving a nice gash on my right hand that took a couple weeks to heal, but managing not to damage my phone even cosmetically despite its skid across the ice. I'll take that for not being accustomed to walking on ice before this. Although I'm sure I've just jinxed myself and will fall three times in the remainder of this week on the little ice that's left. I think the award for most impressive Uppsala ice statistics has to go to my friend Vanessa, though, who fell 17 and a half times but managed not to be injured a single time. That's impressive injury-avoiding skills, and something most of us can only wish we had.
Also changing has been the length of the day. We don't have daylight savings time until next week, but already it's not dark at 6:15 PM when my Swedish class starts, and not completely dark at 6:30. Compare that to being completely dark at 4 PM when I arrived. Even though 6:15 - 6:30 PM isn't late for it getting dark, compared to what it has been here it seems pretty good. I guess the way to get someone to stop complaining about how early it gets dark is to send them to Sweden for a couple of months in the middle of the winter. From now on we'll have more sun than most of the world, though, and before long we'll have quite generous amounts of sunlight in the evening. Being an evening person myself, I'm quite looking forward to that - even being in France in midsummer a few years ago I quite enjoyed the late sunsets, and it should be even more drastic here fairly soon.
Wildlife is also starting to appear. I saw a squirrel yesterday, and more birds are starting to appear. No flowers yet, but I'm sure there will be some eventually. And then we'll probably get insects, too. That's one nice thing about the Swedish winter, there aren't very many insects. But we'll see how it goes, as long as there aren't as many mosquitos as in Sault Sainte Marie I'll be happy with the generous sunlight!
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