Winter in the City

With the New Yyear, winter has arrived in Kyiv. Some people say, temperatures were down to -20C last week. It's now round 0 to -5, with a lot of sun, so a perfect day for winter sports. We equip ourselves with skating shoes and off we go together with Peter's colleagues Natasha and Sergey and their families to the skating place "Nauka" in the west of Kyiv. Skating is popular here, many shopping centers offer indoor skating to keep people longer in the shopping mall.

During the "Sportwoche" in Amstetten, we had all done this for the first time since long, but as always, don't count on kids loving the same thing twice in a row. Nathalie loves her new shoes and is off quickly. Isabelle groans a bit that she still has her old shoes, but after some time enjoys the skating also very much. When after 1 hour the ice-machine (with steaming Diesel engine, a nice experience in the "Traglufthalle") comes back to repair the ice, we take the chance and head for a pizza with the whole crowd.

After lunch we need more of the ice, so we're off to Obolon, for some adventures on the frozen Dnipro. The ice some 15cm thick, and quite many try their luck ice-fishing. They drill holes with a real drill (see the photo) or use a simple lance.

We make it to one island and continue our adventure there. We find a tree which must be a copy of Pippi Langstrumpf's tree in which she keeps her lemonade, but as it's too cold, the lemonade is frozen to blocks!

On the way back to our car, we have a short talk with one ice fisher, who just pulls out a fish as we speak to him.

Time to go home, it won't get better and the cold gets to our toes, next time we all come with our snow boots!