Sunday proved rich in events: Easter, the flooding of villages, Cosmonautics Day, and the election of a new Hungarian prime minister. The ice breakup on the Tom River reached the Tomsk Region on April 10, and on the 11th, ice movement began within the city of Tomsk itself. However, due to several ice jams, the river eventually “froze up” again, and water levels began to rise. On the night of April 12, the water level near the Kommunalny Bridge—which I wrote about some time ago—exceeded the danger threshold of 890 centimeters, according to official local reports. Water spilled over the roadway beneath the bridge and began flowing into the Sennaya Kurya, a small river in Tomsk. That same night, floodwaters reached several villages in the Tomsk District. Because of ice jams on the Tom River during the spring thaw, water rose quickly, inundating fields and several streets. Approximately 100 people were evacuated. One resident said that before 2010, these villages did not flood. The r...
Marina's photo of Spring Tomsk Today I showed my husband an Instagram video of a young woman cleaning windows by literally stepping outside… on the fifth floor. Well, it’s actually a well-known tradition to clean your home in Spring. And Easter is almost like a due date. There’s also a specific day - Clean Thursday—the Thursday before Easter. I don’t know the full history behind it, but the idea is simple: you clean and wash as much as you can on that day. For some families, washing windows is an obsession: regularly in spring and autumn; it doesn't matter on what floor your apartment is. Of course, not every woman does this, but many still do—I was one of them. I lived on the 8th floor, and I used to make sure to lock my apartment door with a key, not just a bolt (in case I wouldn’t be able to open it from the inside). To be honest, I did this for about 5–6 years. Then we installed modern plastic windows that open inward, which made the whole proc...