one wonders if the grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence mountains
Andre, you'll see that I've taken the liberty of tweaking your words a wee bit... At times like this, seeing fotos like this, we here the Valley, y'know, we wonder if maybe our compatriots t'other side of the mountains, well, maybe, they're just, y'know, showing the same pictures year after year, and how would we know, after all?
A few years ago, I was travelling across Canada on a working trip with a colleague. We visited Saskatoon in late January, and it was pretty much what you'd expect from what is, after all, a cold semi-arid place; hospitable, to be sure, but in late January, the bitter NW winds whip the typically shallow snow on the vast flat fields into ridges and "ground blizzards", and people leave their trucks idling outside the coffee shops, 'cos otherwise they might not start, it being 40 below and all.
We finished our work together, and my colleague flew on to Vancouver, which he had never visited. I followed a couple of days later, and he met me at the airport. The air was soft, a few degrees above 0, the mountains had their expected cones of snow, there was no ice to be seen on any body of water, there were cyclists in shorts on the bare dry streets, and my colleague said, "This place is wonderful, John! It isn't Canada, but it's wonderful!"
There is a downside, for some, anyway: A few years after the trip above, I was in Ottawa in mid-Feb, and a colleague phoned to say she'd be arriving in a couple of days. I told her that she should bundle up, as it was -25 at midday. She said, "I don't care. I can't stand it any more. I haven't seen the sun for
forty-one days!"
