freezing

Temperatures in the Netherlands have been below zero for a couple of days, and have reached a point that there are special precautions taken for homeless people so they won't freeze at night with temperatures between -12 and -20 celcius. Sofar we haven't had much snow, we mostly notice the cold because of the ice that covers the many lakes and ditches. I haven't checked wether iceskating is possible on the canals in Utrecht, but it probably won't take long before they'll be frozen over.

It's funny to see how the whole population embraces the cold and goes out for ice skating. One important cultural attitude is that the first type of skating that people think of when you mention ice skating in the Netherlands is speedskating or the 'Elf stedentocht'. The last one is a 200 km long skating trek in the northen part of the Netherlands on natural ice. When I left for work today, I caught part of a newsflash about a 50 year old man who had attempted to skate this trek on his own today, but he skated into a hole because the there are still some openings. We're hoping that it will stay this cold, we need one more week for the trek to go through. In the last century the trek took place 15 times.

We skated on the moat around Naarden when I was younger with my grandparents and prants. When I was older we used to skate on the swanlake near Leusden, together with all the other kids. I didn't particulary like skating because I dislike cold, but now it seems like a good idea to try it once more.

Yesterday I pushed a car out of a spot of black ice because the wheels couldn't get a grip. I'm so glad that I travel by train and I don't have to scrape ice from the windscreen every morning.