We’re not called DutchReview for nothing. We are going to Review Dutch stuff. Movies, events, food and artists. If it’s Dutch, we’ll Review it. So here it is: Indoor Ice skating.
With spring approaching slowly now, the ice-skating season is also past us. However, some things will just not be trapped inside a season: enter indoor Ice-skating (Dutch word: binnen schaatsen). When the temperature drops under 10 degrees Celsius in the Netherlands, ice-skating fever pops into the country. You might have noticed the Dutch ruining every Winter Olympic medal table by winning at Ice-skating and you might have enjoyed one of those awesome action packed 10 km races (most notable and craziest one was when Sven Kramer skipped a corner or something, that was 3 whole seconds of pure drama).
Best thing ever at Ice-skating (DR staff: to our regret there wasn’t a shorter clip of the ‘action’, shit hits the fan at 0.45)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p05Tt1mgiqg]
When is there something wrong with? When it’s free indoor skating for all.
Just like all full grown men, there was only one way I could have ended up at this indoor ice skating thing: being semi-forced by the misses. So there I went, off to the Indoor Ice skating hall just 500m away from my house, thereby breaking the awesome ten year stretch of me not ice-skating indoors. After paying 20 euro’s and forcing myself into some horrible sweaty skates, it was time to have some ‘fun’
So what made it ‘fun’? I’ll give you three reasons.
So-called Professionals
Since Schaatsen is more or less the most popular sport after the high and mighty King Football some Dutch people are pretty good at Ice-skating. And by god, they will be showing off and serious about it as well. Be prepared to get tackled by old guys weighing in at 100 kilo’s plus while skating 50 km ph (and hurray for the metric system damnit!)
Kids at crotch height
So you’ve got it all under control. Just some nice ice-skating with the ol’ lady. You can almost stop faking your enthusiasm and actually enjo… BAN
G! Right in the nuts!
And since you’ll always end up going there on some national day off for all: the horrid crowds!
So yeah, think twice before you’re going indoor-ice-skating. What’s the rating? Well I’m going to give it 2 stars out of 5. But hey! Who am I? You think you know better? Go ahead and rate it yourself, go post some even wittier remark in the comments. Give it 1 to 5 stars: one star being the level of democracy that comes with a monarchy (pretty low for those who haven’t studied Political science) and five stars as in the Dutch ability to build dikes.
So pretty negative article there DutchReview. Ain’t got nothing positive to say on Ice skating? Yeah, for one, it’s always a good buzz (for nothing) when temperatures drop below zero and Elfstedentochtfever spreads throughout the nation.
Second, people can also crash awesomely with Ice skating as you can see in this video. Enjoy!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_H6dsV53Cg]
[…] even the usually gruff Northerner. But the last time it took place was in 1997 so in the meanwhile ice-skating loving Holland enjoys themselves with talking about whether it will happen this year or […]