I remember a time when harsh winters were much more common, and offering frost, snow, and lots of fun skating and playing with the sled. There were stalls on the ice selling hot chocolate, pea soup, and even polka chunks. Nobody knows what polka chunks were anymore, but I found them delicious. They were rather shapeless lumps of congealed sugar with a characteristic spicy flavor.
In Rotterdam, I often skated on the lake north of the city. One of the two large lakes in the Hillegersberg neighborhood, created by peat extraction. Ice skating had a few constants: the cracking of the ice and the murmur of air bubbles underneath the ice as you skated across it. The loudspeakers on large stands that emitted a somewhat nasal sound. The speed devils who, with their hands behind their backs, would cross the entire lake in two strokes. The little kids on “krabbertjes” (a kind of catamaran skate with two blades per foot) and the absolute beginners who shuffled along behind a chair, tirelessly plodding on to eventually achieve the goal of independent skating.
Of course, there were also the amateur ice hockey players, practicing their sport on a designated area of ice. Then there were the courageous buffs who just couldn’t stand up straight on their skates, simply because their bodies weren’t built for such an unnatural way of moving. These brave souls were doomed to more or less slide across the ice on their ankles.
Also on every ice rink were a few young boys, usually so cool they didn’t need a jacket. These ice cowboys were primarily concerned with skating away from their companions, then racing back at high speed and making the most sudden stop possible, by standing on their skates in an angle of 45 degrees, and scraping to a stop. The goal wasn’t so much to rejoin the group, but to create a cloud of ice shavings while braking.
But what I found most beautiful to watch were the older couples zigzagging across the ice together in the traditional way. Rarely have I seen simplicity and elegance radiate so much power as in the elderly couple, imperturbably performing their ice dance. It sent a very strong message: all that modern fuss with ice hockey skates and clap skates is fun, but the things we used to do were worth something too. Moving slowly has great advantages; you can enjoy it longer.
And that’s what I’m discussing in my VLOG this week, see here:
*** FlND THE BOOKLET ‘WlNTERY SCENES’ HERE: ***