Break out the sweaters again, plug in the electric/oil radiators, stoke those wood burning stoves (not really).

The heat is off. It happens around Easter each year. There’s governmental control, if you didn’t know, over a vast majority of the heating supply to the city. Gas powers boilers, which heat water, which run through radiators in most every part of every building. I’m sure you can imagine how large an operation this is. And it’s all powered by natural gas. You remember, don’t you? — the gas that “we” weren’t paying for, that caused parts of countries to our West to go without heat for a few weeks in January? The gas “we” were being accused of stealing from Russian pipelines? Yep – the very same gas has been turned off to the big boiler rooms.

When there’s a certain number of days (10, I believe) in a row above an average specified temperature, they close the valves. Don’t quote me on this. My wife just said she thought it was governed by a specific date, irrespective of the temperature. Either way, I guess it makes sense… why heat when it is generally warming up anyway. And practically speaking, it has been warming up to the point where I’ve was beginning to wonder when it was going to happen. I doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the heat coming from the radiators is unnecessary. The transition is a rolling one, meaning that they can’t just shut off the entire city by flicking a switch. Different areas (suburbs) are switched off at different times. Our apartment is now off, but the family home is still on – supposedly until 19 April.

I also noticed, for the first time, this year, another sure sign that Spring was officially considered to have arrived. Sure, sure, the blooming plants are a dead giveaway that greenery is right around the corner. But another indication that the Ukrainian Government also recognizes the fact that it’s getting warmer is the storage of the inner set of doors at the Metro Stations. Normally there are 2 sets of (heavy) swinging doors that one must pass through in order to enter or exit the stations. As I walked out of Luk’yanivska yesterday, I was surprised that the entire set of inner doors were removed and apparently stored for the summer. Probably ~24 doors, although I was told that there would be no math.

Let’s hope for warm weather ahead, and no freak snowstorms –> which are known to happen every now and again.

Now if I could only figure out how I can manage to go to the office in shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops, I would be truly stoked for Summer!