Re: [Cz-L] Daily life in Czernowitz

Dear Eytan et al,

Sounds pretty much like the winters in Montreal.
Although -40C is rare, but -20C is not...brrrrr....

Merle

----- Original Message -----
From: <fichblue_at_aol.com>
To: <mirtaylo_at_indiana.edu>; <Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu>
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2010 10:59 PM
Subject: Re: [Cz-L] Daily life in Czernowitz

Here are some more cold weather memories of Czernowitz, from my late
mother Pearl Spiegel Fichman's memoirs (Before Memories Fade):
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The winters were extremely harsh so that the snow that fell in November
would melt in March. When I was in second grade, in the winter of 1928,
the bitter frosts persisted all through the winter months; the
temperature dropped to -40 degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit. (At -40 the
two measurements are the same).

The newspapers wrote about the Danube being frozen solid and that
people from Bulgaria skated across the river to Romania. It probably
happens once in a century for a winter to be so severe. People used to
say that the wolves were coming out from the woods into the villages.

As much as the apartments were heated with fire-wood, the moment we
stopped stoking the fire, the apartment cooled off, at night. One
covered up with featherblankets, over the shoulders, just the nose
stuck out, for air.

On the windowpanes, the indoor humidity froze forming ice flowers, but,
at the bottom of the window, nearer the frame, toward the sill, the ice
got to a thickness of a finger or two. We had double windows and in
between, on the sill, we placed a sort of longish pillow stuffed with
sawdust, to prevent the frosty air from penetrating through any crack.
In order to air the rooms and the kitchen, the windows had a top part,
which could be opened. That was called "Oberlicht" (top-light).

I remember one Saturday afternoon, on my return from school, (school
was on six days a week) Mother and [my sister] Sali were in the
apartment, all wrapped in blankets. Since Mother would not light a fire
on the Sabbath, the person who came around to do it at lunchtime,
didn’t come back again to renew it later. The embers had burned out,
only ashes remained and the room was cold. Mother would start heating
the house again after the first star had appeared. When I came home,
jolly and happy and with rosy cheeks, Mother asked anxiously: "How is
it outside?" She heard the whistling of the wind all around. She
thought that I would be frozen. I answered that it was so nice and
breezy, that I crossed the road a few times back and forth, for it was
windier that way.

I read recently the memoirs of the Bulgarian writer Elias Canetti and
he describes the severe winter of 1928 and how they crossed the frozen
Danube by sleigh into Romania.
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Eytan

Eytan Fichman, AIA
B.Arch., M.Arch., Ed.M.

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Received on 2010-10-04 09:05:32