It is snowing in Helsinki

With Wintergeddon again spreading its frozen grip across southeastern Australia — it’s been snowing in Orange again — I’m reminded of this short story I put on Face book a while ago. It, and the video, are worth another life, I think.

It is snowing in Helsinki, according to my weather app. Memories come flooding back.

Snow. I'm from Sydney. We don't do snow. So, one January day early this year, I found myself walking through a Helsinki street, when this snow started falling. It was impressive, as the snowflakes were SO large. I had to film it. It was a quiet backstreet behind the national museum, well away from downtown bustle. And the snow tumbled down so silently, completely fascinating.

Until I spent last Christmas holidaying in Finland, I had no idea how delightful snow could be. How it muffles sounds, how it drifts and eddies slowly up the street. The silence is striking. I'm used to a good, torrential downpour, with drumming of rain on a corrugated iron roof being part of the perennial soundtrack to life in Australia. But snow falls so quietly. And then builds up in drifts and banks of white icing sugar along the street, instead of swirling along gutters and disappearing down the nearest drain.

On Christmas Day, everything in Helsinki shut, I went for a long walk — four or five hours, thought Kaivopuisto Park, along the frozen Baltic seafront, past the docks, into Kamppi and downtown, past the Johanneksenkirkko (St John's church), past the Soviet-era grey stone pile of the Russian embassy — hammer and sickle still over the door, and slowly back to Eira and home. It snowed lightly all the way. I had no idea how delightful — how utterly beguiling — walking in the snow could be.

Not a soul to be seen for most of the way, I had the still, soundless white world to accompany me. Warm as toast in my heavy duty parka, my beanie (a delightful gift from my friend Helen in Canberra), and my Himalayan woollen socks, bought at a Christmas stall on the railway platform at Mälmo. Savouring every moment. Delighting in the candle-lit windows in every household, I ploughed on.

I'd never awoken to the results of a good overnight snowfall, with banks lining the kerb. Watching commuters digging the car out. Or a man silently langlaufing along the street. A crocodile of preschoolers reaching the tram stop, each with skates around their neck, heading off to a skating lesson.

For the record: in the meteorological history of Sydney, there has been one recorded snowfall. The Sydney Morning Herald reported it thus: "June 27, 1836. Raining at 3, 6, 9 p.m.; very heavy rain in the night; 7 a.m. of June 28, snowing heavily, snow lying one inch thick". This is disputed by the killjoys at the Bureau of Meteorology, who say it was most likely to be "soft hail", not snow. So — we don't do snow. But one day, I would like to, again.