Canals in the Netherlands no longer freeze every winter, so the chance to ice skate outdoors created a frenzy in Kinderdijk and elsewhere in the south. (Michael Kooren/Reuters)
For the first time in 12 years, the Netherlands' canals froze this month. Which brought the Dutch out onto the ice in a heady mix of pandemonium and euphoria. Thousands of skaters, their cheeks as red as apples in the freezing temperatures, took to the ice, and hospital wards were filled with dozens of people with broken arms and legs as well as sprained ankles. In the 19th century, during the days of Hans Brinker, the hero of the novel in which he tries to win a pair of silver skates, the canals froze almost every year. But water pollution and climate change have made this rare today. With an influx of immigrants, the country has been struggling to maintain what it considers its Dutch soul, one of many here who thought the skating experience enabled the Dutch to reconnect with their identity. Water is our friend, a lot of our area is water.
Above: My skates...
Right "it is just not the same on a skating Rink"
From days of old, people could skate to each other in different villages. Others spent a lot of time just skating meditatively alone, leaning slightly forward, arms crossed on the back. A 6-year-old was on the ice pushing a chair to avoid falling, the traditional Dutch way for a child to learn to skate. Later, the rain and clouds of the usual Dutch winter came back. Weather experts said that the cold snap that brought the ice earlier in the month had been caused by cold air that came rolling in from the east, across Germany and into the Netherlands. Oddly, though, the cold swept across only the southern Netherlands and not the north. This mattered because this year is the 100th anniversary of the first race across frozen canals through 11 cities in Friesland, the “Elf-Steden Tocht; and this race has been held every year in the past century when there has been adequate ice.
(Freely borrowed from the “International Herald Tribune” edited by me.)
2 comments:
I think you should continue this traditions track as long as you can think of traditions! Very interesting and fun to read.
Skates might be on my Dutch Soul. Unfortunately they'll probably never be on my Dutch feet!
I loved this article on traditions, with the ice skating. Do you remember how much fun we had "op de ijsbaan" together while we were going together? I was a lot sturdier on my skates when I was holding your hand as we skated around and after we had skated a while we would go to the warm-up house drinking hot mulled wine, or anijs melk. I always loved that time.
Continue to write about traditions it is important for others to know.
yours "glimoogje"
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