Temperatures over here have dropped by a few degrees during the last couple of days.

There I am on the platform at Bad Nenndorf station waiting for a late train to Hanover, and I am facing away from the wind and turning my collar up, because I have always hated the cold.

It reminds me of last winter, during the glacial nights that followed the snow-blind frosty days in the mountain ranges of Shanxi. I come to realize that I am not out here walking anymore, instead I am waiting for a train that is supposed to pick me up in a matter of minutes…

There are so many places in the world that get so much colder than this though.

One of them is Heihe (黑河) on the Russian border:

Heihe, January 20th 2007.

The guys you can see on the picture were busy cutting large blocks of ice from a frozen river that is called Amur in Russian and Heilongjiang  (黑龙江 – black dragon river) in Chinese. They told me they used those blocks of ice to produce works of art or decorations with them. It was -25°Celsius that day, I could see China on the left side and Siberia on the right side of the river, and there were armed border patrols in between. My hands were numb from the cold, and I didn’t understand how those guys were able to work like that every day.

The moment was magical though.

Have you ever read Andreï Makine’s “Once Upon the River Love”?

I think it is about this river.