The Dutch love skating. It’s sort of their winter surrogate for bicycling.

The urge to skate will be especially pressing given that the end of the cold spell is in sight. They’re expecting snow and possible thaws on Sunday and Monday, and it looks like this might be the last chance to skate until next winter.

I’m no fan of cold weather, and I’m not much of a skater, but I’ll be out there.

Ice skating has a real appeal. It’s not just the physical activity, or the social aspects, or the sense of community it brings out. It’s also the different perspectives you get. The different viewpoints of the cities and towns and countryside.

It’s not all that often that we get to walk on water, and that’s effectively what you’re doing. You’re seeing things from a place and angle you normally aren’t able to see them from.

Canals run nearly everywhere in the Netherlands, within the cities, in suburbs, throughout small towns, across the fields and farmland. It’s hard to walk 50 meters (yards) in a city and not have to cross water.

When you’re skating on the canals, it’s as if you’re in people’s back yards.

Regardless, we’d best enjoy it while it lasts. And on skates isn’t a bad way to do it.

Related Posts:

• No Elfstedentocht
• On the Ice
• The Big Freeze Continues
• DutchThings – Ice Fever

They’d been hoping that the weather would be cold enough for long enough to make the ice thick enough to run it. But it’s just not enough.

The Elfstedentocht takes place in the northern province of Friesland. The tradition goes all the way back to 1760, when there was mention of skaters visiting eleven cities in Friesland. The first official Elfstedentocht was in 1909, and it’s been skated 15 times since. The last time was in January 1997.

Because it runs so infrequently, it’s quite an event.

The news has had constant – sometimes minute-by-minute – updates on efforts to clear the snow off the ice and thicken the ice faster, as well as forecasts of future temperatures.

Thousands of Dutch typically participate – they were expecting 15,000 this time. In fact, thousands more would skate it if permitted, but only members of the Frisian Eleven Cities Association are allowed to. Even then, the Association has to have a lottery to limit the number to a reasonable level.

But even 15,000 skaters take a toll on ice, which is why they require it to be 15 centimeters thick for the entire 200-kilometer route. Given the Netherlands’ fickle weather, that doesn’t happen often.

Which is why there is so much excitement when it (almost) does.

Still, Dutch enthusiasm for the event is remarkable. People were selling permits to skate in the tour on Marktplaats.nl, the eBay of the Netherlands. Friesland hotels were expecting 1.5 to 2 million visitors — nearly three times the population of Friesland itself. One article estimated that Friesland would have raked in €100 million if there’d been an Elfstedentocht this year.

It says something about a country when it can get that excited about skating for hours in sub-freezing temperatures and harsh icy winds on canals and ditches.

And finally, a little Elfstedentocht trivia, courtesy of Wikipedia:

- The Elfstedentocht of 1963 is known as “The hell of ’63″. Only 69 of the 10,000 contestants finished the race, due to temperatures as low as -18°C and a harsh eastern wind.

- Up until 1963, skaters put newspapers under their clothes to stay warm during the tour.

- The tour of 1985 ended prematurely at 11 PM because of thawing.

- In 1986, Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander participated in the Elfstedentocht under the name W.A. van Buren — literally “of neighbors”.

- The 1997 race was won by a sprouts farmer named Henk Angenent.

- The course can vary slightly from race to race, depending on the quality of the ice. Here are the cumulative distances at each checkpoint from the 1997 tour:

•     0 km: Leeuwarden
•     22 km: Sneek
•     26 km: IJlst
•     40 km: Sloten
•     66 km: Stavoren
•     77 km: Hindeloopen
•     86 km: Workum
•     99 km: Bolsward
•     116 km: Harlingen
•     129 km: Franeker
•     174 km: Dokkum
•     199 km: Leeuwarden

Related Posts:

• The Big Freeze Continues
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According to DutchNews.nl, “the Netherlands is now officially in the grip of a cold spell because the temperature has not risen above zero since January 29 and the temperature at night has been as low as -10 Celsius for the third night in a row.”

The article adds, “there have been 32 official cold snaps since 1901, according to website weeronline.nl.” I assume from this that “snap” and “spell” have the same official definition.

The post also points to the darker side of the cold weather. Ice on the water can mean ice on the roads and rails. In particular, the  snappy weather has once again caused the trains to snarl, just as it did last year. I’m glad I don’t have the job of keeping thousands of kilometers of rail lines in a 100% safe condition through all of this. Certain other countries (Germany and the Nordics come to mind) do seem to manage better than Holland, but I suspect that there’s less tolerance for inefficiency there.

What’s worse, at least two people in Holland died yesterday from falling through thin ice.

Still, the spell of sunshine and cold seems to have been a needed break in the midst of winter for a lot of Netherlanders. Here are a few more photos of wintry scenes.

Related Posts:

• On the Ice
• The Big Freeze Continues

And yet today offered Dutch a great opportunity to get out on the ice in clear, sunny (if very cold) weather.

And get out on the ice they did. Here are some photos from today in IJburg.

Related Posts:

• The Big Freeze Continues
• Skating on the Brain

DutchNews.nl has already announced that the first outdoor ice route is opening Sunday. According to this article, the ice is 8-10 centimeters (3-5 inches) thick. Amsterdam’s City Council has banned pleasure boats from canals in the Center, to let them freeze over. Local ice clubs are opening outdoor rinks, too.

The “big freeze” is going to continue for at least a week.

Unfortunately, “the snow expected on Friday makes it unlikely the ice will thicken enough for an Elfstedentocht – the spectacular 200 km race between the 11 cities of Friesland. The event was last held in 1997.”

Related Posts:

• Skating on the Brain
• DutchThings – Ice Fever

And for once, I’m not complaining about the weather.

The clear, dry, sunny days are a relief from the winter we’d been having — day after day of clouds and rain, with high winds whipping into your face.

Cold and clear is a respite from that, though it’s still a bit windy for my tastes.

The important thing is that when the temperature’s below freezing for long, Dutch brains turn to skating.

***

The Dutch are big into ice skating. They show races on TV frequently, and a large chunk of the population skates when they get the chance.

It’s understandable, in a country that has as many canals as this one. Look out the window of nearly any house or office building and you’ll probably see water somewhere. And when you live within easy walking distance of a canal or lake, its easy to get out on the ice.

In fact, most communities, large or small, have specific areas set up for ice skating. Some flood a field before winter to create large rinks. Here and there in towns, parents will materialize to shovel and sweep the ice smooth on nearby canals, the Dutch communal spirit in action. Chairs will materialize on the ice to help little kids learn to skate, a Jailhouse Rock approach to ice. Racing adults, out for practice or exercise, will whiz past.

On cold, frozen weekends, urban canals can even be crowded. Not quite a Breugel painting, but still a spontaneous community gathering.

***

Thinking about it, there aren’t many places you couldn’t get to in Holland on skates. I have little doubt that given a hard enough freeze you could skate from nearly any address in Amsterdam – perhaps in Holland – to any other address. You might have to jump over a sluis (lock) or two, but there would be a water route you could take.

And you’d probably end up closer that you could by car.

Related Post:

• DutchThings – Ice Fever

How big on bikes are the Dutch? According to DutchNews.nl, they bought 1.7 million of them in 2011, down 3.6 percent from 2010. That’s a lot of bikes, in a country of 17 million.

More astounding: The average price for a (presumably new) bicycle paid by the Dutch in 2011: €960.

Nine hundred and sixty euros. That’s $1,260, at today’s exchange rate.

I find that number to be just a little amazing. I like bikes. I even have a couple of my own.

But 960 euros?

And these aren’t souped-up racing bikes. These were what most Americans would call “granny bikes”. Standard, practical, durable things, with big seats and comfortable handle-bars. The sort of thing you could ride to work on. Many do.

I read some time ago that bikes had become status symbols for Dutch families. Maybe like lawn mowers are for some American ones.

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• Bikes on the Bottom
• Bicycling: Amsterdam vs. Gainesville
• The Purloined Seat
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Amsterdam. Zaandam. Volendam. Rotterdam. Holland has a lot of dam cities. How many? And what do the names of its towns and cities say about the country?

***

I have to confess to being something of a data junkie. I’d blame it on my economics education, but truth be told, I was into numbers and information long before I was into economics.

So I got looking at Wikipedia’s List of Netherlands Places.

I should note that this wasn’t intended to be a scientific survey. I was just curious. And my choice of Wikipedia as a data source was mostly for convenience. My list contains 3,260 places. Other web sources mention 5,000 or even 6,000 different towns and cities in the Netherlands.

Also, this is different from the Gemeenten (“Municipalities”) in the Netherlands. Gemeenten are the community-level governmental units. They typically will each contain several different towns (dorpen). There currently are 415 Gemeenten, down from over 600 in 1996.

***

First, the obvious. The Netherlands is wet. How wet? It rains over 200 days a year here. Twenty-seven percent of the country is below sea level, and sixty percent of the population lives there. The Dutch and their progenitors have been fighting water for more than two millennia.

So you’d expect water-related terms to play an important role in place names here.

Starting with the “dam” question, 46 Dutch towns and cities have a “dam” somewhere in their names. That puts these dam towns at number 10 on my list. Which is no surprise. If it weren’t for the dams, there’d be a lot less land in Netherlands.

“Broek” comes in at number 7, with 59. Don’t be fooled by how it looks. “Broek” doesn’t mean “brook”. It means “marsh” or “swamp” — again no surprise. Much of what is Holland today was swampland in an earlier incarnation. It’s only been through 2000 years of draining that they’ve been able to turn the broeken into velden (fields).

There are 70 towns and cities with “dijk” somewhere in their names.

Interestingly, there are 72 places with “berg” in them. “Berg” is Dutch for “mountain” or “hill”. Strange that in a country this flat that so many towns and cities are named for hills and mountains.

You probably wouldn’t have guessed number two. It’s “huizen”, with 74 places. Evidently, houses were once such notable landmarks on the flat landscape that hamlets came to be named for them. Groups of three houses apparently became the six different places name Driehuizen. Five houses in one place must have been even more remarkable — there are ten different places named Vijfhuizen. Ironically, three towns are named “Berghuizen”. There’s also a Dijkhuizen, a Hornhuizen, an Oosthuizen, a Blokhuizen, and even a Waterhuizen.

***

What’s number one? Not “woods” (hout). And not bridge (brug).  Even “town” (dorp) was only 11th with 38.

“Veen”. The largest number of towns and cities in Holland were named for … peateries. Peat bogs. Places where they cut peat bricks out of the ground. There are 82 veens.

Why? I suppose it was a matter of focusing on what was important. During some of the key periods of Holland’s development, peat was it. Holland didn’t have that many trees to begin with – most trees don’t grow well underwater, after all. And what trees there were probably chopped down pretty quickly for firewood. That left peat bricks – the bricks of half-decayed grasses and plants that forms in bogs, moors, muskegs, and mires. The fuel of choice for centuries.

***

To summarize here’s my (non-scientific) Top 20 Place Names in Holland:

1. veen     82
2. huizen  74
3. berg     72
4. dijk      70
5. land     62
6. wijk     59
7. broek   59
8. veld     55
9. burg     47
10. dam     46
11. dorp     38
12. beek     34
13. wold    34
14. brug     33
15. meer    32
16. hoek    30
17. woude 28
18. hout     28
19. hoven  25
20. holt      19

The app is named Hogenood (“High Need”). The winner was determined by online public voting.

That says something about how hard it is to find a public toilet in this country. Even at Amsterdam’s Central Station – even at some McDonald’s – you have to pay 50 eurocents to use one. In city centers, you often see portable, open-air urinals. They might seem crass to Americans, but I’d imagine the lack of privacy becomes less of a concern the later it gets and the more you drink.

In any case, it’s actually refreshing to see high-tech apps being used to meet low-tech needs. Typical Dutch: a practical solution to a practical problem.

At the gas station, a number of uniformed people were standing in the dark drizzle, directing incoming cars into four lanes set up before the pumps.

“Alcohol control check”, the officer told me, in English. He politely instructed me to take a deep breath and blow into the machine until I heard a click. I did so, he looked at a reading for a second, and told me I could go. They were running six checks at a time.

For the record, I passed.

Some might find it ironic that in a country where cannabis is (effectively) legal, they set up highway roadblocks to make sure that no one’s gotten too happy at happy hour.

But that’s a misconception about the Dutch. They’re actually less likely to use drugs than people in many other countries, the U.S. included. The vices in Amsterdam and elsewhere are mostly there for the tourists.

Drugs and prostitutes are for the tourists. Dutch don’t drink and drive.