This post is also available in Russian 🐻

As much as I love Kraków from March through October, the rest of the year in this part of Europe is dreadful — even to someone who grew up in Urals and is used to seven months of brutal winter a year.

• 
• 

The Sun here rarely penetrates thick lead clouds, but even when it does, it goes down by 3 pm. So all you can count on is 8 hours of twilight a day.

• 
• 
• 
• 

Daylight saving time should have been banned here ages ago. But they keep finding dumb new reasons to postpone this change one year after another.

• 
• 
• 
• 

There’s not much to look at even when the lights are on anyway, since the world turns sepia and fog makes everything perfectly flat and shapeless.

• 
• 

Sure, heavy fog adds some character to the picture, especially at night. But when its veil lingers for weeks, you forget there’s a world behind it.

• 
• 

It also fubars flight operations since Kraków Airport doesn’t have an ILS system. So leaving for a while may not be that easy even if you want to.

• 
• 
• 
• 

So you might as well stay and enjoy the festive season with all the fairs, lights, and shows. It surely gives you a reason to crawl out of your cave.

• 
• 

Snowfalls can also brighten the mood. But they’re rare and sudden, and the snow melts after just a few days, bringing in even more fog and drizzle.

• 
• 
• 
• 

The oldtimers say that winters used to be proper winters some years back. So I guess it’s less about the place and more about the times we live in.

• 
• 

Some things get better with time though, like the air quality that used to be awful when I first came here, and has significantly improved since then.

• 
• 

But sometimes you can still catch the smell of coal being burned somewhere beyond the city limits — where it hasn’t been officially banned yet.

• 
• 

The worst part is usually over by the Winter Solstice — from there it only gets better, or at least you feel this little dark age won’t last forever.

• 
• 

So just hang in there and good luck.