Is it spring yet?

It's been a cold winter in Moscow and St. Petersburg, from what I hear. Apparently, it's still pretty chilly over there - according to the current info from Weather Underground, it's just 1 degree above zero Fahrenheit, or minus-17 Celsius. And it's not much warmer in Moscow. This makes me recall an email I received last month at the height of one of the cold snaps from an old, old friend who's a SPB native:

It's very cold everywhere, we drink tea mixed with vodka and minimaze [sic] our moving around the city.

For some reason, that observation brought home the level of cold better than any amount of meteorological facts and figures.