Most of the time, the Netherlands has the most old-fart-friendly landscape on Earth. It’s flat, has wide footpaths and bicycle lanes, and easy access to everything urban and rural.
And then sometimes it snows and freezes…
My word, it is beautiful! And at first, the snow is easy walking. When you walk in fresh snow, the sound is like a mixture of crumbling biscuits and the popping of microscopic bubble-wrap. Not a crunch, not a crackle, but a crunkle. So you crunkle along in the snow, each step sure, each a delight. The snow stops, everything around you looks like frosted cake – the ground is flat icing, the trees, leaves, branches, fences, bicycles and motorcars folded in flowing, sparkling white. Snow layers cover the cafe tables and park benches, slumping off the edges like thick white blankets.
Every hardware and toy shop in town has displays of wooden sleds, circular plastic snow-boogie-boards, ice skates and other snow playthings. The newspapers report that most stores have now sold out of skates, as everyone believes the freeze is here to stay.
Snowmen appear on every park, and by intersections. Children laugh and the dogs bark as they romp in the fairytale parks. People tow children on the wooden sleds, and sometimes even get their dogs to tow the sleds.
But after a while, the landscape becomes less friendly. Hundreds of pairs of feet crunkle through the snow, which compresses more and more until it becomes hard, lumpy ice. No more soft crunkling is heard.
The youngsters gleefully slide on the compressed snow, polishing it and compressing it further. Soon it becomes slippery, malevolent and treacherous. When you walk on it, you feel the strain on your tendons as your boots twist on the uneven ice, and your muscles begin to ache. If you fall (and many do) you land on a surface as unyielding as granite. The landscape is now old-fart-hostile. You begin to see more and more people using crutches and wearing bandages.
But I would not change it for anything. It is so spectacular!
Tags: daily living, snow, weather
