Well, not just summer…spring too, and soon autumn.

It happens every year, I think, this moment of saying bye to your most recent summer. I wake up, the autumn sun is shining, but the temperature dropped to subzero levels for the first time since March during the night and traces are felt on the air as soon as I step outside. Hats and scarves have been retrieved the evening before from boxes largely untouched over the spring and summer months. I’m going to wait as long as I possibly can before putting on gloves, because that one is always a winter signal for me, and all my deeply entrenched Siberian sensibilities resist the approach of winter as long as possible before common sense sets in.

The final twinge of my sentimental heart comes from looking around in the park on the way to work. The trees are still covered with yellow and orange leaves, but plenty of those are on the ground and I can see it’s the last layer sprinkling all those branches before they become bare and autumn, too, is over.

I arrive at the office, take my coat off, settle myself at my desk and after a moment’s deliberation I turn on the heating just a bit. And then I see them in my mind’s eye, the crystal clear flashbacks that would certainly make a pretty sequence in a music video, the ones that everyone must have and which I momentarily dive into. New maxi dresses swaying to your and your friends’ relaxed steps during the heat wave, walking along in the shade, spreading out a picnic blanket under that tree in the park during lunch, lying back and looking up at the blue sky through green leaves fluttering now and again in the breeze, laughing at my own bad puns barely after getting them out, evenings full of conversations you don’t forget, before going quiet and smiling at each other, because the moment was just full enough and didn’t need anymore words.

So here we are, and I’m not even being corny, I mean every word. I guess I’m not a winter person, even if I appreciate plenty of things about the season. Enjoying warm drinks becomes that extra bit special and sometimes you literally just need it to defrost on a thankfully still non-Siberian level. Hamburg gets decorated for Christmas. Everyone starts talking about Christmas markets opening two weeks before they are due to do so. Staying in for most of a weekend day, if you can, is an increasingly repeated answer to the popular question “How was your weekend?”, if you want to answer more than “Good, thanks.”

There’s also the fact that these are basically a few months you can use to prepare for the next non-winter seasons, by way of buying summer dresses now on sale (what an exercise in patience and being organized) or dreaming about the next day trip somewhere nice when the days start to get longer. Because they will, and that’s the fantastic part. You only have to hold out until December 21, then the shortest day off the year can be ticked off your list and, as I always say, we start moving towards spring.

Not biased, just opinionated.