Although we had a little bit of snow at the end of October, now snow really came to Kuterevo. Before coming here, I (Marco) heard a lot about how cold the winter is in Kuterevo. During all my life I have been living in the hot city of Murcia, southeast of Spain, and I had only seen the snow in postcards and on the internet. Also, as you know, I like meteorology, and low temperatures and snow are for me an awaited event. Finally a couple of weeks ago, after checking the weather forecast every day, I could see my dream made reality: Snow is here! Snow started to fall on 30th of November and it keeps up more or less on the ground until now. But the maximum of snow was last weekend when we had half a meter, and after that, at the beginning of this week, we had about -15 ºC.

But, how is the daily life in these conditions? Snow creates a beautiful landscape and also funny moments. For example snow fights while you are trying to go to the compost toilet, even if you don´t want to, and of course making snow men. However, it is also hard work and uncomfortable moments. You have to clean the snow early in the morning and try to take breakfast with your frozen hands. When it is very cold we don´t have drinkable water and we need to carry water in bottles from our neighbors. I especially love the moment of going to the toilet. You really enjoy that moment, you can feel how the fresh air goes from down in your back to your legs. In that way you really appreciate having a toilet inside your house. Also you need to be careful on the way to the toilet, because while you are walking on the icy path, you can slide and fall down. We don´t recommend using coklije, even though it is a traditional kind of shoes and really warm, but when walking in the frozen snow, sooner or later you will fall.

And, how are the bears living the beginning of the winter? They are now going to their winter dream. We started to give them the straw for preparing their beds before the snow came. Although they reduce their activity during winter, they don´t sleep all the day and when they wake up they sometimes walk a little around the den. They don´t eat during their hibernation, so we need to stop giving them food. Before that we gave them a lot of food full of energy like nuts, corn and fruits, because they need to get fat to survive all the winter.At first we stopped feeding the adult bears. Four out of six have already been sleeping for a while (but have woken up again now), like Vlado Mir and Hu Bear. A week ago we stopped feeding Mladi Dol and Mlada Gora, but they are still awake. We still feed Marko Kralj every day and he is enjoying the snow playing with his friend, a dog called Doci.

Marco