A Rare Deep Freeze Warms the Dutch Soul

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/world/europe/16skaters.html?_r=1&ref=world

January 16, 2009
Nieuwerkerk Aan Den Ijssel Journal

A Rare Deep Freeze Warms the Dutch Soul

By JOHN TAGLIABUE

Michael Kooren/Reuters

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. “Everybody took days off,” said one mayor.

NIEUWERKERK AAN DEN IJSSEL, the Netherlands — For the first time in 12 years, the Netherlands’ canals froze this month, bringing the Dutch, who like their tulips in neat rows, a heady mix of pandemonium and euphoria.

Hundreds of thousands of skaters, their cheeks as red as apples in the subzero temperatures, took to the ice, and hospital wards were filled with dozens of people with fractured arms, sprained ankles and broken legs.

Train engineers were ordered to go slowly to avoid hitting skaters who clambered over railway tracks to get from one frozen canal to another. Even the minister of defense, an avid skater, fell and broke his wrist. His ministry announced that the national defense remained in safe hands, even if one of them was in a cast.

In the 19th century, when Hans Brinker, the hero of the novel in which he tries to win a pair of silver skates, coasted along Holland’s ice, the canals froze almost every year. But water pollution and climate change have made this so rare that today a boy of 15, Brinker’s age, may never have seen a frozen canal, or at least remember one. Until, that is, this year.

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[rurallib]

1. I remember a few years ago on Hockey Day in Canada

the sports network was going to broadcast a kids game on an actual outdoor pond. But they couldn't find any frozen enough to let anyone skate on them.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. When I was a kid

Our little village had a number of ponds, which would freeze over each Winter, suitable for skating by Christmas. This Winter was the first time I can remember for several years that they've done so.

[GliderGuider]

2. I spent a year in Holland in 1958, and we skated on the canals for at least a month or two.

As I recall, even then freeze-up was the rule rather than the exception.

[Turbineguy]

3. I skated on a frozen river there once.

The Eem.

Pretty scary. The sound of the water flowing under you. But the Dutch know how to do this. Every few hundred meters there's a little stand selling coffee, filled cakes, and "Snert".

Nice pic. of the Zaansche Schans.