A Cold, Cold Christmas...

Alright, so it is January and Christmas is practically a distant memory at this point, but Northern Europe is still quite cold. It has not been above freezing since I arrived. Of course, my dear friends Dan and Deborah who spent the last four months in Bonn but returned to Minnesota a few weeks ago have no sympathy for the comparably tropical temperatures here, but for me it is pretty cold. Plus, they have abandoned me here in Germany to return home to their "jobs" and "families," so they really deserve no consideration. It makes my morning walk simultaneously a bit more treacherous and a bit more brisk, plus the cold makes it difficult to think about anything besides the heat being slowly sucked from your extremities. However, I do love winter weather for two reasons.

(The View Of the Snow Outside My Apartment and the Fields Across the Road. Plus, A Glimpse Into How Dark Northern Europe Gets This Time of Year.)

The first reason is that being forced to actually battle the elements and realizing everything around you is trying to suck the warmth out of you actually makes me feel alive. Your skin and muscles tighten, your breath shortens, your heart beats faster. In general it reminds you that for all the abstractness going on within your mind, it is contained in a much larger, much colder, quite real vessel that needs to find warmth somewhere. Most of the time I feel rather detached from my body as anyone who has seen me attempt to display grace in any way can attest. Also, somehow despite eating granola for lunch and actually exercising regularly in the Bay Area I could not get below 185, but after one winter in New York I was at 165 and now am down to 160. Perhaps the walking had something to do with it, but the rather irrational part of me that loves equating all human behavior with animal behavior thinks my body was storing up energy for five years and winter never came. Still, I did love the food, wine, friends and comforts of the Bay Area, and would gladly take the 25 pounds back to experience them again (Don't tell my physician).

(The Glorious Beard)

The second reason I love winter is rather simple ... beards. Personally, I have a great deal of respect for impressive facial hair but rarely make it through the slightest balmy day with a full beard. I have always preferred the cold to heat and found any temperature over 80 rather oppressive (of course being skinnier I can now make it up to 85 before I am really uncomfortable). So, any time I get the least bit warm I shave off the beard. However, in this winter weather with no personal reasons to shave, I am sporting the most glorious beard of my life. Plus, it helps that a solid percentage of German mathematicians have beards, so I fit in pretty well here. Anyway, I am sure it will be gone at the first hint of Spring, but for now I can bask in the glow of my beardliness and respond with my standard, "Thank you, I grew it myself," upon receiving the occasional compliment. It is hard to explain my fascination with facial hair, except that perhaps in the absence of property or a family, it is something I can successfully grow to show the world I grew up in that I am in fact a man.