16th of December
Portuguese Sagas
The snow in Portugal
I wrote about the snow in Iceland, the other day.
Now I want to talk about the snow in Portugal. Some might find it rather insignificant to see white on the roads in my little land. It is not, we have to remember where in the world Portugal is. We are in south Europe, it should be warm all year, or should it not?
No, we have winter here, very cold winters, humid and rainy. The houses are built from bricks, not solid bricks. No, the bricks are open and the cold creeps through them and makes everything really cold.
It’s about the weather as so many other things when people are describing the country they live in that the truth becomes a bit askew!
In my little land and my little village the weather is like this: The summers are sometimes really hot and the winters are almost always ice cold even though we don´t have snow like the one in Iceland!
But we do have snow in my little land. We have snow in Serra da Estrella and people go there to enjoy it. The roads are covered with ice. We don´t have tires for the winter and we are not used to drive in the winter conditions. Simple isn’t it?
Some foreigners tell about the heat all year around and when I see that or her I wonder where they live and what the reality looks like in their minds. As you can see in the pictures here the Portuguese people are cold, just like me, and they have their warm clothes on. That is the truth of the truth.
In the summer we change and my favourite is a red thin dress that dances in the wind and is cool and fresh, always.
Sometimes the snow manages to reach my village, and we have this white all over for a while, not long but it can be there. It reminds me always of how lucky I am to live in this land and not in the northern Europe!
Driving in the rain can be like driving in a frosty snowy weather. The roads have tire tracks full of water and the car glides out of control like in a river. If people don´t drive carefully they might regret it. That’s just winter in my little land.
I hope everyone arrives home safe and sound this evening or afternoon. There are not good conditions and change they all the time.
Hulda Björnsdóttir
My thoughts shared with you 