It's all about categories

My Dear Aussie Pal called this evening to tell me she had 'arrived in this popsicle of a city' - meaning, of course, Zürich! Exciting for me to show her some sites and the now refreshingly not-so-stinky apartment.

Tomorrow we are expecting a high of -2 degrees C, and a low of -8 tonight! And it's well on the way there: this evening I raced out of the apartment into flurries of fluffy snow to put the compost in the Big Green Bin.

Yes, we have composting! It gets taken to the local recycling plant, which is just around the corner and up the road a bit.

I just realised I thought I was going to be writing about snow, but I'm actually writing about waste product. How about that. But I've been meaning to blab on about this for a while anyway, because I'd heard (prior to arrival in Z) that one had to pay for tickets to stick on rubbish bags so that the garbos would take them away.

Of course, this information was slightly baffling to us, sitting in our Wohnzimmer (ha! just showing off - living room, it means) in Canberra, since we couldn't imagine leaving bags on the streets due to the presence of curious Aussie wildlife. And secondly, we couldn't imagine Joe Blow being so civil-minded as to purchase his tickets and dutifully stick them on bags.

In fact, it's slightly easier than that. You do have to buy specific rubbish bags appropriate for your area (about $20 for a roll of 35 litre bags), and only these can be left for pickup.

We were most impressed that there are an abundance of recycling bins for glass and tins on most streets in the city of Zürich, and PET and milk cartons can be recycled at all the Co-op supermarkets.

I'm not quite on top of all various types of recycling in our town yet, as I was given all the information in German and have been too lazy to babelfish it. But the gist of it is that there are particular days where you can leave out e.g. cardboard, paper, etc. (I just look out the window and think: 'Oh look. There's a whole bunch of cardboard...')

So back to the snow: I happened to be doing some surfing about snow, because I wanted to know all the Inuit words and what they meant. Mainly because since we've been here we've had: sleet, fluffy snow, hard hexagonal ice-bits, hail-ish looking tiny balls, and slushy wet big flat bits of snow.

So here's a list, from the Inuit, Aivilik and Igloolik languages:

Aluiqqaniq : Snowdrift on a steep hill, overhanging on top
Aniuk : Snow for drinking water
Aniuvak : Snow remaining in holes
Aput : Snow on the ground (close to the generic Snow)
Aqilluqqaaq : Fresh and soggy snow
Auviq : snow brick, to build igloo
Ijaruvak : Melted snow, turned in ice crystals
Isiriartaq : Falling snow, yellow or red
Kanangniut : Snowdrift made by North-East wind
Katakartanaq : Crusty snow, broken by steps
Kavisilaq : snow hardened by rain or frost
Kinirtaq : wet and compact snow
Masak : wet snow, saturated
Matsaaq : snow in water
Maujaq : deep and soft snow, where it's difficult to walk
Mingullaut : thin powder snow, enters by cracks and covers objects
Mituk : small snow layer on the water of a fishing hole
Munnguqtuq : compressed snow which began to soften in spring
Natiruviaqtuq: snow blasts on the ground
Niggiut : snowdrift with South-east wind
Niummak : hard waving snow staying on ice fields
Pingangnuit : snowdrift made by south-west wind
Piqsiq : snow lift by wind. Blizzard
Pukak : dry snow crystals, like sugar powder
Qannialaaq : light falling snow
Qanniq : falling snow
Quiasuqaq : re-frozen snow surface, making crust
Qiqiqralijarnatuq: snow when walked on
Uangniut : snowdrift made by north-west wind
Uluarnaq : round snowdrift
Uqaluraq : taper snowdrift

PS. Watch where the huskies go: beware of the yellow snow.

(... and with that I guess we're back to waste product.)