Fifty Shades of Gray

“Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.” 

-Sinclair Lewis 

I was ready for the cold. I had a mental checklist that I'd gone through before I arrived in Germany. After an experience my senior year during the before-I-knew-what-winter-really-was-years of my life. It was in Chicago, I'd visited the U of C Law School to check out how it tickled my fancy. The school was fine, people nice enough and the reputation of the institution itself was appealing but there was something that I couldn't get past: it was freezing in March. The wind bit at my face, its incessant howling a mocking reminder to me, "Of course it's cold here Clifford, we're right by the water." Needless to say my experience at U of C helped me along the way to deciding on some other, warmer, sunnier alternative for my impending legal doom education . 

This detour to Germany has only reemphasized how wisely I went about picking a sunny location to spend the last few years of my life law school years . No, like I said above, I'd prepared perfectly for the winter; a well reinforced jacket, a positive mentality, accessories such as gloves, beanies and scarves, and a little bit of luck (that you aren't caught in the freezing, hail/snow combination, halfway to your destination on a bike with only a jacket in between you and the elements) is all you really need to survive. Until this point there'd been very little complaint about the cold weather. 

Sweet while it lasted.  

It's not the temperature necessarily, no, it's the unbelievable duration of winter. I have been in Münster since the first of October. According to a weather website, in that time span I have seen 13 days of sunshine. Thirteen. If you're superstitious, that means the unluckiest number in the world. I cannot remember the last sunny day I had. The weather site claims it was Febuary 11th but it was characterized as a "Mostly Cloud, Partly Sunny Day" nonetheless after a weekend at Karneval I'm sure sunshine was the last thing I wanted beaming down on me. So..let's skip the Partly Sunny days (one on January 23rd) and go to the next fully sunny day. January 12. 

That's right, one sunny day since the year 2013. You know, The University of Chicago undergraduate school has adopted the nickname, "The Place Fun Goes to Die" if I had to give Germany a nickname I think I'd stay along that grain...let's call it...hmm how about: 

November 2012; Hamburg, Germany

December 2012: Münster, Germany

January 2013 Duisberg, Germany

February 2013: Starnberg, Germany

"The Place the Sun Goes to Die."

On Friday I was ready to amend this blog post, because I was granted with around three hours of heavenly sunshine and it made my bike ride to work all the more enjoyable. By two o'clock on the same day it was snowing. My black gloves were white after having to wipe white powder off of my bike--the same bike I'd ridden to work with my life soundtrack playing somewhere in the background: I'm Walking on Sunshine. 

Tip-toeing more like it. 

The snow kept coming down, and it's now Sunday, shovels scraping the sidewalks and driveways. I am in my own personal horror story. It never ends. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Alaska is #2 (23:100,000)in the United States, ordering the states by the population's suicide rate. The only state that's above the white tundra is Montana. I think that Montana owning the top spot for suicides per capita is fairly self explanatory (if I lose any readers today...they come from Montana). Is this because the lovely citizens of Russia's Neighbors see gray skies and white grounds all the time? Because it's perpetually dark and cold? Because the winters are too long and the other seasons too short? Sounds then, a lot like German winters. 

I feel like I'm writing the last passages of my diary in a deep, damp cell somewhere. The ever so slowly caving in walls across from me carved in with knife slashes, counting the days that winter has gone along. Struggling to make it through the cold, gray days and growing a beard to, to no avail, protect me from some of the wind. I feel like Jafar's alter ego, desperate, willing to kill (not even a fly...) for what I want--golden sunshine. 




The best solace I can have is that next Friday it's supposed to be sunny and 40 degrees. It's the only thing I look forward to now. In a world filled with snow, wind that tears your face apart, and clothes that simply cannot, no matter how well they're made, stop that breeze from crawling up and down your spine, I am terribly out of place.