We have had no water since yesterday afternoon here in the suburb of Lakhta, in Saint Petersburg. With all the cold weather that we have been having the last few days — it was -18°C (that's 0°F) the other day! — it seems that some of the main water pipes have frozen and burst.
I would have thought that the municipality would be a little more prepared for this kind of thing; that all the water pipes would be insulated against the sub-zero temperatures here. We are, after all, just 6° south of the Arctic Circle.
To be fair, it does get so cold here that the whole Baltic Sea and all the rivers freeze, so I suppose there are bound to be occasional incidents like this. And this is the first time that something like this has occurred since I have been here — and I have been here since the middle of October...
Luckily we do have some clean water in the kitchen for cooking, and there is some tank water for washing the dishes and flushing the toilets and suchlike, but there is not much water left over for a bath or shower, so we all have to make do with a cat's lick.
I suppose I could always go outside and get some snow to melt: there's certainly no shortage of that... Nah. A cat's lick is going to have to do :-)
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