Нужен перевод текста the new year made a stormy entrance last week, lashing the continent with the severest cold snap in a decade. snow, ice and subfreezing temperatures spelled chaos, and sometimes death, from the mediterra-nean* to the urals. more than 220 deaths, mostly among the homeless and the elderly, were reported as far south as valen-cia, spain. travel became a homeric* task. in the caucasus, an ava-lanche sealed 300 people in a mountain tunnel connecting russia and georgia for days. air traffic was disrupted as was train travel. a paris-bound eurostar train carrying some 500 passengers got stuck in the chunnel* for more than two hours, its engine stalled by snow. ice clogged river traffic on the loire, elbe, main and danube. even england's thames* froze in places for the first time since 1963. the brutal weather put a damper on new year celebrations. those who booked holiday trips to resorts on the adriatic found snow, not sun, on beach-es. parisians ice-skated in the shadow of the eiffel tower early in the week, but by new year's day the city was a ghost town as its citizens hid from the chill. in london, the freeze even muzzled the chimes of big ben for a few hours on new year's eve. the cold snap didn't spoil all the fun. in london, brave bathers still took the annual new year's day dip in hyde park's serpentine.* and in the netherlands, some 16,000 dutch donned ice skates saturday for a 200-kilometer race across the e'rozen lakes and canals in friesland. that's marking the )est of a bitter situation.
