Elfstedentocht

The cold weather has now reached Europe and hit the Netherlands quite hard. This week we had some of the coldest weather in the past years. It was -15^oC during the day, that's cold that hurts your face! So it's normal that everybody is complaning about the extreme cold. People complain about the delay of the trains, problems on the road because of the snow, not being to cycle anywhere. But deep down many Dutch are also happy. Happy why?

This extreme cold means that the water ways all across the country have frozen and people can take out their skates and skate around their town. However what's most impressive is the discussions of whether the Elfstedentocht will happen or not this year. What the hell is this Elfstedentocht? It is a ice skating race across 11 cities in the north of the Netherlands. It doesn't happen often because the ice has to be of a certain depth across 200km. In fact it only happened once in the last 20 years.

I myself I am looking forward to see it happen.It will definetely add one positive point for winter. In my books summer still trumps winter though.

Taken from our back garden. The kids shoved all the snow so that they could skate