Fever!

…in the morning… fever all throuhough the night…

At the moment the entire Dutch population is suffering from the FEVER! The Elfstedentochtkoorts (Eleven Cities Tour Fever) to be precise. We’ve had what, three days with sub-zero temperatures, and you can’t open a newspaper, watch a TV program or turn on the radio and it is the main subject. “Will it happen this year. Is this the year that the Elfstedentocht will be held again?” The last one was held in 1997 mind you so it isn’t a happening that can be organised very often. Hence the feverish enthusiasm of people who can skate and want to skate the ‘tour of tours’ at least once in their lifetime.

For those of you who don’t know about the Elfstedentocht, it is the world’s largest and longest speed skating competition and leisure skating tour (got that from Wikipedia) and it is held in the province of Friesland. Here in the Netherlands. It is about 200 kilometres in length and takes place on frozen canals, rivers and lakes and between eleven cities in Friesland. From Leeuwarden back to Leeuwarden again. Because of the amount of idiots lunatics fanatics people (about 15,000) who put on their skates to skate the entire 200 kilometres in bitterly cold weather, risking freezing to death breaking arms, legs and whathaveyou on the bumpy icy surface, the ice has to be a minimum thickness of 15 centimetres. And that seldom happens. Which is why the last editions of this tour were in 1985, 1986 and 1997. There’s a whole generation who never experienced the happening that is the Elfstedentocht.

Because it is very unlikely that the entire route has the required 15 centimetres thickness of ice, in places where the ice isn’t thick enough (predominantly under bridges), the skaters have to get off the ice and walk on their skates to a place where it is safe to get back onto the ice again. That is called ‘klunen’. I remember that on Koninginnedag (another typical Dutch event, the celebration of the Queen’s birthday) after the 1985 elfstedentocht you could ‘klunen voor een kwartje’ (‘klunen’ for 25 cents) on the traditional Queen’s day flea market in Amsterdam. Some clever guys built a wooden bridge on the pavement and if you paid 25 cents you could put on skates and stagger to the other side of the bridge. I bet they were rich guys by the end of that day. It was an incredibly popular thing to do then.

The things one remembers…

Anyway…

Another thing some people get very excited about when we’ve had about one night of frost is the first ice skating marathon on natural ice. Where will the first one be held?!?!? Traditionally there are three rivalling places in the race for organising this marathon: Hardenberg, Nieuw-Amsterdam-Veenoord (yep, it is one village with three names) and Noordlaren.

Now, Noordlaren often win, because they are smart farmers with the right equipment to create a great, smooth ice surface. A tractor and a liquid manure tank filled with water. And then they drive around the track, spraying a miniscule layer of water every round. And they do this all night long, taking turns in driving the tractor round the track. The other villages just put a load of water on their track and then go to sleep. Which is why the dedicated people of Noordlaren have deservedly won the race for the first Marathon on natural ice this year once again. It was held last night. Noordlaren is the next village from where we live, and hubs loves to watch marathon ice skating (with the emphasis on watch), so he and a couple of friends defied the cold and went to Noordlaren.

I’ve been to watch the marathon two years ago, when it was held during the day. So I thought: ‘been there, done that’ and stayed at home to poke up the fire and make hot chocolate for when they got back.

They have a novelty Zamboni in Noordlaren:

The cameraman didn’t need a fridge to keep his lunch cold…

which is how you blow your nose when you obviously don’t have pockets for a handkerchief

Such fun.