The big dark is setting in. Vladimir is pretty far north; its latitude is 56N, whereas Cleveland, Ohio, is at 41N.  This means that we get a lot less daylight during the winter, and the sun is always at a strange slanting angle; even high noon isn't very bright. According to the weather forecast, right now sunrise is at 9:04am, and sunset is at 5:04pm. I got up today at 8:15, and it was still pitch black outside. The scary thing is that we still have over a month of decreasing daylight hours before we start heading toward spring. It doesn't help that it has been cloudy and grey and rainy for the past few weeks, and there is no sun in the forecast for the next week. Temperatures are hovering around freezing. 

It could be much worse though. I looked at the weather forecast for Norilsk, Russia, which is located far above the Arctic Circle in central Siberia. The high temperatures for the next week are around -5F, and the sun rises at noon and sets at 3:15pm. And the city looks like this: 

For more pictures of this far-northern city, check out this website (it's in Russian, but a picture is worth a thousand words).