Ik ben weer nat... en ik ben het zat.

A week-and-a-half into my re-immersion in Amsterdam, and I'm still feeling the effects of the transition pretty heavily.

The weather has been absolutely atrocious.  It's like we left Ohio in the dog days of summer -- mid-August heat and humidity, sunburns, sweat, and mosquitoes -- and landed in Amsterdam to experience late-October / early-November conditions:  skies of battleship gray, buckets and buckets of rain, high winds, and cold fingers.  The only contants, as it turns out, are the mosquitoes and the humidity.  Absolutely every surface here seems to be immediately susceptible to mold, mildew, must, and moss.  Our basement has flooded twice since we've been back (once likely from the weather, once from plumbing problems).  Shoes and jackets are perpetually stinky.  It's simply inescapable... this morning, and seemingly every morning.

Ik ben weer nat... en ik ben het zat.

[25 more pictures available in the Family Pictures section of the website]

The above photograph of daffodils bears a striking resemblence to Amsterdammers these days.

The weather has taken a turn for the warmer, and people are flocking to the many sidewalk cafe terraces in the city.  They are eager to sit with their faces towards the sun, soaking up as much of its light as possible -- following another long, dark winter -- even if it's only cool enough that they must be bundled up with winter coats and hoods!

Today, however, was warm enough to sit outside comfortably, without the bothersome winter coat.  So I spent my first afternoon on the sidewalk cafe terraces (though other, die-hard terrace lovers have been out for a couple of weeks already!), and at one point I even needed to pull out my sunglasses.

It was glorious.

Spring has to be my favorite season of the year in the Netherlands.  Especially living in the city.  There's a powerful energy that comes over the city, as all the people are shaking off their winter slumber, and everyone is out on the sidewalks or sitting in front of their houses, reveling in the sun.  It feels like some kind of impromptu festival or fair.  It's hard to describe but wonderful to experience.

In Amsterdam these days it's, as they say in the Netherlands, echt koud.  I could pretend like there's a really profound cultural insight in the translation of that phrase, but there's not.  What I mean (and what those Dutch words mean) is simply that it's real cold.  And I mean that as literally as possible.

The snowpack over the city of Amsterdam remains intact, two full weeks into the New Year.  People are saying it's been over 20 years since their last memory of such cold and snow.  This morning, there was a solid layer of (not very thick) ice all the way across the Amstel River -- which I have never seen.  They've shut off the water flow to the canals in the Jordaan (one of the oldest, most scenic and sentimentally-valued areas in Amsterdam) -- in order to let the water stagnate and allow a crust of ice to begin to form on top of these canals in the innermost section of the city.  There have been scattered reports of people venturing out on the ice, and every report is widely and wildly circulated in this country where ice-skating is an integral part of the seasonal culture -- even though it rarely gets cold enough, anymore, for "natural skating" (as opposed to "artifical skating" on man-made rinks, which is something very different in Dutch culture and language).  However, the officials continue to strongly advise against skating on the canals of Amsterdam's city center (though there are plenty of opportunities for skating on the ponds and more outlying waterways -- like we had last year).  For now, everyone is kind of watching and waiting.  We're all holding our breath in anticipation.

It gives us something to do while we shiver to death in the absurdly cold temperatures. :-)

Seriously, though, I much prefer the true winter experience in Amsterdam -- as opposed to the cool, dark, gray, rainy seasons that I've experienced in previous Januaries.  It is beautiful and exciting.  I especially hope that I might get to witness the legendary elfstedentocht (eleven cities tour) -- which is absolutely legendary in Dutch culture.  From everything that I've heard, it's bigger than the Olympics -- like, Dutch ice skaters might have a very difficult time deciding between Vancouver or Friesland, if the elfstedentocht were to happen in the second half of February.  And yet, while they've been holding them for the last 100 years or so, the conditions have only allowed it to occur 15 times.  Ever.  The last one was in 1997.  So it would be a pretty big deal if we could get to see one of those this year...

On certain levels, I'm already wishing for spring -- especially when it comes to bicycling.  The country has literally run out of road salt -- and so some of the side streets are perhaps 4 or 5 centimeters of firmly packed snow-ice.  And it's so cold getting from place to place; even with excellent gloves my fingers are tingling by the end of a 15 minute bike ride.  But when I think about skating on the Keizersgracht and watching an elfstedentocht for once -- well, I'm quite content to wait for spring.