Number of days in Amsterdam – 242
Number of days without a bike theft – 238
Days since it last rained – 3 0
It snowed again today.
And we’re not talking about the dusting that we got on Monday, either. This was a full-blown snowfall that drifted slowly down over the course of the day to the tune of four or five inches.
As the day progressed, I watched it pile on the balcony.
Nicole had ridden her bike to work and had to walk it home, because the streets were unsafe, and trains ground to a halt.
You see, in a city that never sees snow, there’s no need for snowplows. When the snow piles up on rare occasions, there’s nothing to do but wait for it to go away. Most people don’t even have snow shovels, a requirement for living back in Michigan. I bet the people who have cars probably don’t even keep snow brushes or ice scrapers in them.
I mean, it’s not tropical here, but this is a rare occurrence as I understand it, to the tune of once or twice a winter, if that. And it rarely sticks like this one will, if weather predictions are correct.
When Nicole did get home after walking her bike home from the office, it was with tales of how beautiful it was, and how the canals were starting to ice up. Her amazement at that, along with her increasing concern that the fact that the only I had left the flat in a week had me getting the look of one of those bears that they used to keep at roadside stands in Michigan, cooped up in tiny cages for tourists to gawk at, occasionally demonstrating that they had the talent of drinking Coca-Cola out of a bottle and getting poked with sticks by small children, caused her to force me out of the house for a walk.
So after dinner, we filled a couple to-go cups with some coffee fortified with a bit of Irish fire water, bundled up the Kitten and went out to see the city under a blanket of snow.
It was quite amazing.
For one, snow just absorbs noise, so the city seemed quieter, more serene. Parents were pulling children down the unshoveled sidewalks on sleds, and kids were playing hockey in the fountain at Museumplein.
It was not without hazards; we made a hasty turn after watching a car try repeatedly to get over a canal bridge, realizing that drivers here have minimal experience on slippery streets and causing us to wonder how many cars end up in canals in conditions like this.
As we made our way back home, we paused near the Rijksmuseum, surrounded by a silencing blanket of white, and uttered the phrase that has become almost like a mantra these past few months – “I still can’t believe we live here!”
Despite the frigid temperatures, or perhaps because of them, the city continues to be a source of wonder and beauty.
“in a city that never sees snow”
Well, “never” is a big word. We had White Christmasses in 2009 and 2010. There was snow on the ground for a whole month or more last year. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Amsterdam has seen more snow these last few winters than in the last decade together. Because of this, there have even been special advertising campaigns for snow tyres.
A few other things: A lot of Amsterdammers simply cycle in the snow. They throw a special salt on the roads, which is why they don’t use those trucks in the city itself, but they do use them on the highway and other important roads. And, every Dutch person I know with a car has an ice scraper. Many older people on our street use those snow shovels, but younger people don’t seem to use them anymore. Could be a generational thing.
As for the car trying repeatedly to get over a canal bridge; if it’s the same incident I saw online somewhere, it was a Japanese tourist, if I recall correctly. You may have noticed that all the other cars simply overtook that one. The Dutch are reasonably used to driving in icy conditions, but I suppose there are inexperienced/bad drivers everywhere.
K.