Having arrived to Batumi on the 1st of February, I really didn't have that much time to soak in the sun, as by the 20th, an awful snowstorm began. Fortunately, 15 years in Canada have prepared me for the cold weather; don't get me wrong, it's certainly quite frigid. Still, compared to the -30 below centigrade that I'd experienced dozens of times in Ontario, this isn't much.
What does become immediately apparent though is the lack of infrastructure for dealing with such an event - and why a foot of snow here is worse than five feet in Ontario. Snow isn't cleared; period. The relatively high heat, radiating from the ground, melts snow, and causes what I like to call "quicksnow" - a layer of apparently dry, regular snow sitting on top of a lake of slush.
The first day, I was rather amused by the sight of snow on palm trees, and quickly got myself outside to help the locals get their vehicles unstuck. As snow is a once-in-a-decade, historic event around here, I became acutely aware of the difficulties that people living in sub-tropical climates experience, when faced with it.
Most people lack warm clothes - I'd brought a wool sweater, my lumberjack-style jacket, which is good down to -25 degrees, and I've gotten used to the cold by January. There is also a notable lack of winter driving skill - instead of the slow, low-gear crawling I'm used to seeing in Canada, during large snowfalls, people tend to really mash on the gas. This did tend to leave them stuck, as the spun wheels, and quickly overheating clutches and torque converters couldn't get a grip on the slippery compacted snow.
While all was well and good, for the first few days, the real problems did start to appear by day four or five. The airport was shut down. Our local mall (Metro City), was shut down as a result of snow accumulation - which meant a risk of the roof caving in. Awnings all around the city collapsed, and massive clumps of snow, weighing no less than 100 pounds a piece, would fall from ten-story heights.
With a lack of delivery vehicles came a lack of delivered goods. As a member on the local Telegram chat for Batumi, I'd of course seen my share of mentions of unavailable courier services. More worrying though, were the goods delivered to grocery stores - as I don't often buy groceries in large quantities, I made frequent trips downstairs, to the local Daily.
With each trip, I saw the shelves grow emptier, and the