During the first weeks I checked the weather several times a day, as if I could bargain with it. I bought a small umbrella, then a more serious one, and then I understood that the right coat matters more. It is funny how a simple object becomes part of a new identity: raincoat, bus card, list of nearby shops.

The hardest part is not the cold. It is the different afternoon light, the way the day folds itself into the house earlier, and the homesickness that arrives without being invited. I miss the noise of a Romanian market, the shopkeeper who asks how you are, the smell of warm bread when you step into the street.

But there is beauty here too. Rain makes the town gentler. The houses seem more settled, the gardens greener, and people have a polite way of making room for you. One afternoon, on an almost empty bus, I watched drops running down the window and thought that maybe beginnings do not need to be dramatic. Sometimes they begin with a wet journey home and the feeling that I will get used to this.