Russian cold is worse than Madrid cold
// Friday, February 15, 2013
It was 9 o’clock in the morning in Chebarkul, a town in the Chelyabinsk oblast (region or state) in southern Russia. I was getting out of my rental car, which still had the windows literally frozen from the low -10°C outside in the semi-snow. My exhalations were letting off so much steam that it looked like I was smoking a cigarette.
My name is José Antonio, but since I was a child everyone calls me JoAn. I always had to specify that it is neither Juan nor the Catalan “Yoan”. I guess we all live having to give explanations for some misinterpretation.
I was born in the south of Spain and I still wasn’t used to that icy hell that froze the tips of my toes even though I had just arrived and saw the view I had gotten myself some hiking boots. I was also wearing 2 pairs of extra thick socks even to sleep in. The cold had me so cramped that I think my thinking was slower than usual.
I still didn’t understand how fate had brought me here, I grumbled as I looked up at the eternal gray-white sky that accompanied us every morning in search of some divine answer, or at least a blessed ray of sunshine to touch my reddened and snotty nose to warm it up.
It wasn’t a question of money, the metallurgical multinational I worked for paid me extraordinarily well for doing the job of a sort of correspondent in the technical expertise of the materials that Urals, the stamping factory of the Merchel company in Chebarkul manufactured for us on demand and against the clock.
My department head had implored me to come and I now understand that I must have been the only one unaware of the conditions of solitude and hostile weather that this trip seemed to be designed for.
Luckily I was looking forward to entering the factory, because the furnaces that worked the metal kept it at a very warm and pleasant temperature. Besides, my personality is social and the Russian workers amused me greatly because of their somewhat strange customs, sometimes bordering on the grotesque.
Normally I didn’t feel like leaving the workshops and entering the offices, but I was lucky that one of the administrative girls with whom I had to share information spoke some Spanish, which made me feel at home. Her name was Anastasia and from my first day we had a very good feeling because of her great friendliness. She even offered to show me around the region after work, so within a few days we had already connected emotionally despite the popular reputation of Russian women as cold.
That day in particular my whole life changed forever, and not because I had found the love of my life, but because after 20 minutes of working, through the windows of the office was seen a subtle flash that for a millisecond I thought gladly was the sun rising. That beautiful thought soon disappeared and turned into concern when at the same moment I heard a roar similar to that of a Valencian firecracker. It was accompanied by a tremor so great that it vibrated the windows of the whole building with such force that we all froze, and this time it was not because of the cold.
The Chelyabinsk2013 meteorite fell on me.
But what was that? I asked naively thinking that maybe it was something normal for that area. But the look of concern and strangeness on the faces of my colleagues did not seem to indicate anything good. Luckily nothing had happened, but soon the media began to clarify what had happened, even passing television images that left us all stunned.
A meteor had flown over and exploded above our heads and there was talk of injured people being treated in hospitals due to the destructive effects of the blast wave.
I could not believe it, what a welcome I had received. Three days after my arrival and I could have been literally crushed by intergalactic rocks.
If you didn’t see the news, in the end there were 1500 injuries and extensive physical damage from the shock wave of an explosion, caused by the disintegration of a meteor entering the atmosphere, which had been as strong as 30 times the first atomic bomb.
I felt impressed to have been only a few kilometers below such an event and to have survived. On the one hand I thought it would be great to be able to tell my grandchildren about it even though it really hadn’t been a big deal for most of us.
You might wonder how it could really change my life if nothing major had happened. Wait a bit because the story is about to take a very interesting turn.
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