WHAT a difference five hours makes.
Today that was the time it took me to get from the Middle
East to central Europe, with the weather shifting more than 30C from warm and
sunny to wintry and white.
I started that flight in Doha, on the shores of the Persian
Gulf, where the morning was clear and it was hard to see where the water
finished and the sky started as the Qatar Airways I was travelling in climbed
out of the city’s busy airport and away to Warsaw.
Poland is in the grip of a cold snap, with several
centimetres of snow falling in the past few days, and the landscape below was a
monotone of white and black as we broke out of the cloud and descended towards the runway.
The temperature hovered around zero in Warsaw this afternoon - fortunately I didn't have to leave the hotel with a long lunch put on by my hosts at the Hyatt Regency Warsaw - but it’s tipped
to get a whole lot colder during the next couple of days as the front that just
snap-froze German moves this way.
And, just in case you didn't figure it our for yourself, the two pictures at the top of the post show just how
dramatic the change was between taking off in Qatar and landing in Poland with
the heat haze of the Persian Gulf shown in the photo on the left and the cold
of central Europe in the snap on the right.