HOW DO RUSSIANS SURVIVE SIBERIAN WINTER

We are in Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia. It's one of the biggest cities in Siberia and Siberian winters are famously cold. So how do we as a Siberian survive it? What do we do to survive the winter? Winter starts about mid-November and ends in mid-March. That's four months. One third of a year is winter and the average temperature is about negative 17 celsius but at night it can get to negative 40. But sometimes, like today, it's only negative 5. So we are lucky to record this on a pretty warm day. So how do we survive the Russian winter? What do we do? How do we dress? As you can see, I have my mittens, my hat, and my warm jacket. But what else do we do to survive it? Do we enjoy life in this winter? Let's find out today. It all starts with your house. You have to take care of your house, heat up your house. But firstly, it's going to snow a lot. As you can see, we have all these snow drifts right here, left and the right. So you have to kind of clean up where you are, where I am right now. So we have shovels. This shovel right here for if you want to just do it like that, grab some snow, throw it out. Or we have these, which is for, you know, for larger snow to kind of grab a lot of snow and drag it like that. In the spring, the snow will melt. So you have to take it off the roof because if it melts, it's going to go down the house. It's going to go inside the house, inside the garage and things like that. So you really have to take it off the roof as well, maybe like every month, every two months. So it won't be a lot of snow there because if it gets there, it lays there for a long time, it's going to get hard and it's harder for you to shovel hard snow. So you have to take off the snow from where you walk and also from the roof as well. But now let's go inside and show you guys how we heat up the house. This is a furnace. Every Russian household should have this unless they took it down. And in Russian, this is pitch. Okay, pitch. So how do you actually start it? How does it work? Well, you put some wood and some coal inside of right here. You light it up and it's going to heat up the water that's going in the pipes. And then the pipes will go all the way around the house and they're going to heat up each and every single one. That's how you kind of do it. Of course, the disadvantage of this is that it's going to get, it's going to, you're going to light it up and it takes some time for it to get warm, but then it also will die down. So you have to upkeep it. That's why you have to get some wood and you have to get some coal throughout the day to do it. So let's actually go outside, get some coal, get some wood and start this and start this furnace. So I got a bucket of wood. Imagine I have a bucket of coal right here. We have coal in the thing, but it's just way under. I can never take it out right now. I'll explain later why. So I remember my dad used to do this every day at 2am to get some, you know, bucket of coal to put it in the furnace because otherwise it's going to get cold. And if you, if you don't do it in time, you're going to get frozen. You're going to freeze it at night. So you had to do it at 2am every single day. And I remember he used to have like black lines in his palm because of the cold. He couldn't wash it off because he had to do it every single day for a long, long time. He had just black lines right here in his pores. That's what coal does to you. So let's go back inside and show you how to really start up that furnace. Now that we have some wood, let's show you guys how to start it. So if you're ever in a bad situation where you don't have any heating, any heat and you have a furnace, you'll know how to do it. So first, what you need is, is you need some paper. So you have some paper, then you put the wood right here, then you light it up. Once it's lit up, you close this, you close, you close it. Then what you do is you take coal, you open this up right here, you open this up and you put coal right on top of it. You put the coal right on top of it because if you put it there, it's not going to fit. You got to put it right here. And the reason why we use coal is because it burns for longer, so you don't have to really do it that frequently. If you put the whole furnace of wood, look at my fingers right now, already look at my fingers. If you put whole furnace of wood, it's going to burn in about an hour. Coal will burn for like three hours, four hours. And you typically have a pile of coal or a bucket of coal somewhere nearby to add to it. That's how we used to do it. We did it until maybe like 10, maybe 11 years ago. Now what we have, and a lot of Russian households have, they have a gas system. We have a gas system right here. This is a thing that kind of controls the temperature. You kind of put the temperature up and down right here. And so with gas, it's going to heat up the house itself. So you're not going to really have to burn the fire inside your house. You can really do it just with the gas thing. And another great advantage of it is that you don't have to upkeep it. So my dirty fingers, my dad's black spots on his palms are out the door and we have more time on our plate. And lastly, the environment is better this way, because imagine if everybody's burning coal, the ashes will fly out the chimney every time. And so the snow used to be very, very black, but now it's much cleaner because gas is cleaner. And even now driving to here, we saw somebody actually getting the coal in their house so they can make the furnace burn. So even still in this neighborhood, there's still people with the coal furnaces. It's a lot of work. I don't know how they do it. And it's even more expensive to do with the coal than with the gas. So gas is a true lifesaver for the Russian winter. You can control the temperature. It doesn't get cold at night and things like that. But of course, if you don't live in your own house, you live in apartments like these, there's not going to be any furnace inside. So you have a common kind of heating system. Actually, you can see the thing right there. Right there. That's the chimney from the heating spot that heats up all these apartments right here. You don't have any way to control the temperature inside the house, of course, but it gets you warm. Another tradition that we love, especially during the winter is banya. Banya is a place where you go to wash yourself, but also get warm and get some steam. It's like a sauna in the States or in the rest of the world. So let's go inside the banya and show you guys what's there and why we even have it. You come into the banya right here. You come in. This is where you walk in right here. Right here is where you walk in, take off your clothes, take off your stock and jackets, et cetera. Right now, of course, it's not that warm because it's not started. So you have a furnace right here as well. So you put some wood in there as well. You light it up and it's going to get heated up. Once you give it about two to three hours of burning, then it's going to get warm inside. The first room, as you walk in, this is where you wash yourself. You wash yourself here because you're going to have hot water. Back in the day, there used to be no sewage systems. So how are you going to get hot water to wash in the house? There's really a lot of water that you need for the whole family. That's why we have banyas, because the water here is going to be hot and you can really wash yourself. Then the last room right here, this is the steam room. This is where the hot stuff is. It gets about 90 to 100 degrees Celsius. This is the furnace right there. This is where you sit and you get warm and really train yourself to be disciplined a little bit. So that's banya where we wash ourselves, especially those who don't have any sewage systems, don't have hot water in their house. This is really a lifesaver for them. And lastly, let's talk about how to heat up your car when it's cold. At night, even in this winter, I experienced like negative 40 Celsius. And of course, these cars are not made for that temperature. They're made in Japan, in Europe, and things like that. So how are you actually going to adjust for the cars? A lot of the cars have a thing called distance starting, and it starts every two hours, every three hours to warm up. It's going to start the car by itself every two or three hours to warm it up. So the engine won't get cold and it can just start easily in the morning when you have to go off to work. But of course, sometimes the cars just simply wouldn't start. So we have a lot of services that are dedicated for that. They come, they either jump your car wherever you are, or they take it and heat it up. I've seen about three cars already that didn't start. I saw the owner trying to start the car and it simply didn't start because it's way too cold. Sometimes that happens. So you have to be prepared, have a garage. And actually, let's talk about the garages. We have a garage right here where you can kind of drive your car and it's going to be a little bit warmer there as well. So garages are an absolute necessity for the cars these days in Siberia. Okay. And even in the apartments, you kind of buy your own pod where you can put the car when it's too cold. But of course, if you don't have a car and you're traveling by public transportation, you simply have to get warm. You simply have to put on a lot of layers, put two pants, two jackets or something, two sweaters, because you're going to be out in the cold for like 20 minutes waiting for the bus. So the only solution for that is simply to get some layers on under yourself and just get warm. So that's about it. That's how we survived the Russian winter. But what does that mean for you guys as tourists? Simply make sure to buy good quality clothes that are warm. Buy a hat, buy a scarf, buy some mittens, buy some warm pants as well. And of course, as a tourist, you'll be traveling mostly by taxis or maybe, yeah, I think by taxis. So you're going to be okay. You're not going to be freezing in the cold. So just make sure to buy good quality clothes, warm clothes whenever you're coming to a Russian winter, Siberia in the winter. That's it. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.