Winter is coming. Yes I can feel it. Since the last weekend the unavoidable can’t be denied anymore: It will be cold. It will be dark. It will be wet and Rugby season is coming up. Strong signs for another winter in Auckland, New Zealand.
Compared to a freezing German winter, the NZ winter is fairly mild. Yet, it sucks. In fact, it sucks much harder than the European one, especially here in Auckland.
Why? Well you get all the bad things of winter without any of its merits. Since last Sunday and so the ending of daylight saving time, you live in constant darkness since you wake up when it is dark, and you leave work when it is dark. Bugger. I guess, I don’t have to mention the temperature drop that comes with that.
But Auckland is worse than than. Since the temperatures never drop below 5 degrees celsius, you won’t ever see any snow at all. Instead, you will get the odd shower. And with odd I mean it will always start raining when you leave the house and stop whenever you reach your destination. Combined with the never ending maritime windy stream, a winter in NZ feels more like a never ending late autumn, the season that really sucks most.
On the northern hemisphere we can use that time of the year to start looking forward to a prospective x-mas, but I am sorry, there won’t be any x-mas in July when Winter comes to its peak down south.
That’s probably another reason why the people in NZ are happy about the upcoming Rugby World Cup this August. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about this hillbilly version of a mega event like the soccer world cup. But maybe I am utterly wrong and I will have a great time cruising the packed pubs around Viaduct Harbour, celebrating with any team that wants to celebrate and having a big cheers about such a rare occasion of international understanding. (Don’t ask me why I am ranting about Rugby. Usually I don’t give a fuck, but sometimes it bothers me)
I don’t know. I am not very positive about the winter down here, and I know that this article sounds like a constant lament about how the weather sucks, but living in a leaky house without any insulation and a room temperature about 18 degrees Celsius doesn’t necessarily make you look forward to the upcoming months.
But there is a way out of this misery. I realized that a change in your living conditions is the best way to cope with something that is pathetic as winter. So the major change for spring 2011 will be moving into a new flat. In fact, I’ll move in next Saturday. It seems like a much nicer place than my current flat, but more details about this when the time is right.
So long, I am wearing a hat inside my bedroom, because Winter is approaching – meh.