Schaatsen

Ice skating (schaatsen) is super popular in Nederland. When I say super popular, I mean that Nederlanders get deliriously amped up when there's ice to carve. Let me show you. Here is where I work, High Tech Campus Eindhoven:


Not a bad sunny-Friday lunch hour, skating on the pond, eh? Somebody scraped the snow off of a nice winding loop around the pond, creating a schaatsbaan for everyone to enjoy! There was music pumping and hot-chocolate (warme chocolade) for sale outside. By the way, the tall building in the background holds my office.

To me, the ice frenzy appears somewhat like the "powder day" in the Rocky Mountain states -- where it's sort of assumed that you can have the morning off to go skiing if there's a big dump of snow. However, skating this week wasn't just Friday, and it wasn't just a fair-skies fascination. This was Thursday, same scene, in the freezing fog:


Me? After discovering the schaatsbaan on Wednesday, I forgot to bring my skates to work both Thursday and Friday. D'oh! However, the weekend was gorgeous, so I strapped my skates to my bike and rode down to a pond not far from my house to see if there was any skating happening there. Wow, was there ever!




Timeless family fun. The scene on the local pond was not that different from this one, painted in Holland in the 17th century:


Schaatsen has a long history in the Netherlands, for sure. Leisure skating, speed skating, even hockey, to a lesser extent (most Dutch think of hockey has a summer grass-field sport -- played by men and women, by the way). The nation holds an impressive number of records in speed skating competitions, and, historically, skating on the vast network of Dutch canals was a favorite wintertime activity. Unfortunately, in recent years, winters have rarely been cold enough for skating! I think that a big part of the reason for the hullabaloo around skating here and now is because it has become so rare.

A famous Dutch skating marathon, the Elfstedentocht, or, literally, Journey of Eleven Cities, has become almost a mythical tradition. It was last held in 1997 because the ice has not been consistently good enough to hold a 200 km race since! It's interesting right now, because it has been unusually cold for nearly two weeks and everyone is talking about whether it will be possible to hold the Elfstedentocht. I sure hope so, maybe I'll make the trek up north to see it!

Cyclobrûlée

"Crunch, crunch."
The satisfying sound of cracking the freshly-torched sugar surface of a crème brûlée. I heard it this morning on my commute to work, not from a spoon, but from my bike. As I may have mentioned, I thoroughly enjoy my morning rides to work, taking a winding route through Genneper Parken, a park with varied forest and farm terrain. Part of this morning's path is traced below:


The map was made with GPS Visualizer using data from my little GPS logger that I tend to take with me most places I go.

Parts of the path through the park are unpaved, and this morning's frosty temperature induced an icy topping on each of the pothole puddles along the way. The first one I zipped over made the same "crunch, crunch" as a crème brûlée being broken with a spoon when my tires sequentially cracked its surface. Smiling, I broke as many more little frozen crème brûlée puddles as I could before I exited the park. What fun.

Ride Between the Raindrops

Tuesday morning was horribly rainy. Well, it was horribly rainy until after I biked to work, got soaked, and got to my desk. Right then, the clouds blew past, and a gorgeous blue sky opened up. Nice, eh? At least my office has a nice window...

While riding in the rain, which, by the way, is not as bad as it sounds thanks to really effective fenders on my bike, I was watching the other cyclists dealing with the weather. I believe there are three types of foul-weather cyclists. The largest group, like me, simply deals with the rain, although we're not happy about it. I have a nice rain jacket, and biked with my hood up, although some others didn't have or bother with a hood. Regardless of our garb, we simply grit our teeth, bow our heads to the wind, and go. We get wet, and we deal with it. The second group, a minority group maybe half the size of the teeth-gritters, is made up of ultra-prepared foul-weather cyclists, with things like fancy rain suits, waterproof shoe-covers, waterproof panniers, etc. These bikers laugh in the face of rain because they are simply impervious to it.

The final group, least in number but not in style, appears to blithely ride between the raindrops. These cyclists, mainly highschool-age girls, by their appearance, were completely unprepared for rain, wearing jeans, cotton jackets, and otherwise normal clothes, and with hair done and streaming behind them, smiling and laughing with their friends on the way to school as if totally unaware of the deluge I was fighting. They didn't appear to even be getting wet -- although I thought I saw one girl unconsciously brush a droplet off of her cheek. Amazing, I tell you. I truly wish I had a photograph, but I was too busy gritting my teeth and trying to ride faster than the water could saturate my pants. Actually, I think that a photo would not be effective, as it would minimize the appearance of the rain and just look like girls biking to school on a normal day. Maybe if I showed a photograph while dowsing the viewer with a glass of water, that would convey what I saw...

Foggy Bike Day

Tuesday was a foggy day. Fog in the morning; fog all day; fog in the evening. From my office window, I could sometimes not see the nearest buildings through the white haze.

In the morning, thanks to this fiasco, I rode the bus to work. As I waited at the bus stop, I took pictures of the happy cycling commuters rolling by. (Click the photos to embiggen)


Biking home in the foggy twilight, I shot a bunch of photos from the saddle. The air looks brighter in the pictures than it did in the drawing twilight, but I overexposed them a bit to show the white fog and to enhance the motion blur.


It was a gorgeous, still evening, and the silence in Genneper Parken was as thick as the misty air. The bike paths (fietspads) were empty.



Looking into the fields beside the path, the distant trees faded to vapor.


Leaving the park, finally, another cyclist appeared, her weak headlamp preceding her squeaking bike.


Back in the hustlebustle of the city streets, this garrulous pair was chatting and hand-waving for blocks. I took pictures instead of ringing my bell to pass.


There was no rain, yet I arrived home feeling wet, my wool coat covered with tiny spheres of water. I was in a cloud.

Now I'm Really Living Dutchly

I am more-or-less living in limbo: no apartment, no residence permit (it's pending, of course), no bank account (also pending), etc. I have health insurance, but the policy number is pending. I live in a hotel, which sounds posh and nice, but in reality is claustrophobic. I eat out for every meal, which also sounds great, but in reality is tiresome and heavy. All this feels like some kind of twisted vacation -- it's fun and interesting to be in a foreign country, but I'm spending all my time trying to remedy the aforementioned problems rather than enjoying the trip...

So, today I rented a bicycle from the hotel and rode it to work. That is the essence of living Dutchly! It was a gorgeous, chilly, sunny morning, and the bike paths were chockablock with scarfed Dutch commuters. I biked through the park; I biked by the big avenues without any worry about cars; I biked through intersections with the special bike-lane stoplights; I biked into the complex I work in and locked the bike in the ground floor of the parking garage. Very pleasant, a good way to get going in the morning, and much faster than the walk-bus-walk combination I've been doing until now. I'm sold!

Here are some action shots taken from the saddle. First, a typical Eindhoven intersection with the pink bike path, mini bike stoplights, pedestrian crosswalk to the right, and of course car lanes to the left. Very organized, and very safe for biking.

Next, the approach to the only hill on my commute, the little bridge over the Dommel River.


And finally, approaching the High Tech Campus (on the right, across the road).

As I mentioned, it was chilly this morning. Not cold by upstate New York standards, but cool enough that I wore gloves. I noticed that I was in the minority with regard to manual insulation. I saw quite a few cyclists with one hand on the handlebar and the other in their pocket! Makes sense, I guess -- warm one up for a few minutes, then switch! I was the only one with one hand on the handlebar and the other taking photos, though, for sure!