In and around the picturesque Giethoorn was fully enjoyed the last skating day on Sunday of the season. A welcome consolation for all who yearned for the canceled winter sports holiday.
Judith HarmsenFebruary 14, 2021, 18:24
The avid skater is everywhere The Netherlands is easy to recognize. On the skate of course (clap skate at preference, or an old-fashioned low pair of Norwegians), to the clothing (tight skating suit, scarf for the mouth and nose) and the early time when he waterkant reports (preferably at sunrise, to be able to skate before the ice is to be able to make a round).
Also in and around Giethoorn are reporting early Sunday morning the real diehards. On the Dwarsgracht for example, and the canal that opens into the Weerribben-Wieden National Park. Left and right they catch up with your scribbling reporter (not the most experienced skater). By blisters don’t seem to bother them.
It’s people like Gerrit Pascal from Zwolle, who skated in front of his wife early in the morning. “She has figure skating, so it’s not that hard,” he chuckles. Or like Martin and Ilse Jutstra, from Hoogeveen, who even got teenage daughter Anne-Roos so far to get up at six o’clock this morning and already have a big trip around nine thirty have sat. Ilse Jutstra shows a video of a couple on her phone hours earlier. A red stripe where the sun slowly rises above the meadows, no one around. “Beautiful isn’t it?” she says. “Typically Dutch”, adds man Martin.
The mayor of Steenwijkerland, the municipality to which Giethoorn belongs already warned well before the weekend that the municipality would close the roads to the village if it was too busy. The ice club was also not allowed to prepare the ice, as it would otherwise to do. That would attract too many people.
And so the skater who got it there nevertheless, the last skating Sunday also regularly ventures small pieces clone to avoid the bad pieces of ice. “Oh, if you still have 40 kilos lighter,” a father sighs as he puts the protectors on the irons, and steps to the side. Jealous he watches his two young children under whiz across a bridge.
Box of snert
Especially in the village itself is the ice cream now covered with a good layer of powdery snow. But the skaters who If you drive here, come especially for a glass of chocolate milk, or a bowl snert that the restaurants on the Binnenpad sell. On the side they turn their face the sun and stretch their skates forward. Not just the ski suits that many of them carry, but also the music in the background (‘just do me beer, every quarter of an hour’, then ‘Sweet Caroline’), are reminiscent of the winter sports holiday that so many people had to miss this year.
“People need this so much”, sighs Joost ten Vaarwerk. His blue-red skating suit from the Hengelose skating club reveals that he used to compete in competitions. The in his twenties, driver at the Hema, just like everyone else saw a lot of canceled it last year. “I had to miss festivals and I would make a tour through America,” he says. Now that he can enjoy being outside for a while, does he does too.
At the restaurant’s mulled wine stall Fratelli, he is now an old acquaintance. “Are you sure?” jokes Maurizio Parrella as Ten Vaarwerk takes his alcoholic order. not at wrongly perhaps. Because no matter how experienced the latter is, a demonstration of his ‘Sven-Kramer mode’ ended in a crash just before that.
Although the hotels are full this weekend and the cars along the canal show that not everyone has hearing given to the call to go out on the ice mainly in their own environment, it’s not really crowded anywhere. At most where you can get goodies. And yet: “We people hardly need to remind them to distance themselves keep,” says Arie-Willem Vermeij of Grand Café Fanfare. “It’s just for the first time a little
The tourist center of Giethoorn almost seems to want to prove something: that in real life it is not inferior to the postcards. Winding canals, dozens of wooden bridges. Thatched little farms on lawns that look like they’ve been trimmed with nail scissors. And, around Christmas, twinkling lights on the neatly painted eaves.