Sometimes the cold brings out the best in people... and sometimes the worst. But there are certainly differences between the way different cultures cope with the cold. Or even what they define as being cold.
I initially laughed when English friends were telling me that they were worried about 16 cm of snow and -3 degrees (Celsius) last week. This pretty much describes the generalised winter picture here in Rhone-Alpes in the morning. Besides, I grew up in Austria and Romania, with hot summers and cold, snowy winters. I can deal with having four seasons and struggled initially with the mono-seasonal English weather.
However, many years of living in the UK have softened my defences. I have even forgotten how to dress up warmly enough. And now that we are experiencing -15 on the school run, I can understand my English friends and apologise to them for laughing. For it is not the absolute temperature that makes the difference, but the relative temperature! Relative to what you are normally used to, and relative to your own preparations for cold and snow.
Here in Geneva/Rhone-Alpes, schools (and businesses) continue to function as normal despite snowfall and low temperatures, but comparisons with the UK are unfair, because here everyone has winter tyres, snow shovels, grit on the roads. The schools have reliable heating, the children all have thick clothes or ski suits. They wear winter boots instead of the wellies I saw many English children wearing last year when we had snowfall in December. Not because their parents genuinely believed that wellies were the best thing to have on your feet in the snow, but because you could not find proper boots anywhere. And at least they were marginally less slippery.
Things are not perfect, even in these countries used to adverse winter conditions. Trains and planes are delayed while they clear the snow, some villages are isolated in the snow, there are power cuts here and there. The unexpected catches us out even when we half-expect it. Milder winters and rainier summers have made wimps of us all.
And, of course, homeless people everywhere can die of cold, at any subzero temperature. And that is not a laughing matter.
