Gunther (my Audi A3) has been spending a lot of time under the snow this week. The photo shows him on Sunday after we got back from lunch, but by Wednesday he was parked further up the street under about 10cm of snow.One of the challenges when it snows is that some of the parking spaces end up full of the snow which has been cleared by the snowploughs. On Tuesday evening I had only one choice of spot and didn't notice that about 1 metre of Gunther's rear end was overlapping a restricted parking zone, where you may not park between 8am and 5pm.
When I went to drive to work on Wednesday at around 8:30am, I was excited to see that there had been a further fall of snow overnight. However, it had not deterred the Finnish traffic warden from writing me a ticket and reaching through the drift to secure it under my windscreen wiper; I was somewhat less excited to find that as I brushed the snow off the car.
It is only my third parking ticket, at €40 a time, since I moved here. If I add the €36 for each six months that I pay for an on-street parking permit, it still costs me less than renting a garage. But I can't help feeling a grudging admiration for Helsinki's traffic wardens, who don't let these adverse weather conditions deter them from their noble work. Yet another example of Sisu!
1 comment:
I'm sure you know, but we had a little snow here in the UK too. It was the first time our son saw real snow -- and where was I rather than showing him the delights of making snowballs? Stuck in the desert in Vegas!
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