November 18: Skating In Utrecht

It's been a busy week; Hans went off on a trip to Brazil so I've had a bit more work to do than usual.

Yesterday, while on our way to visit friends of the family in Rotterdam, we decided to stop by a rink in Utrecht to go public skating.

I bought myself skates last week because, after finding out what a big hockey fan I was (and enduring my emotional highs and lows while watching Canucks games), Hans spoke to one of his friends who helps organizes a hockey school for kids here. The school is chronically short of people to help run the training exercises, so on Sunday mornings I've been going to a rink in Amsterdam to help Dutch kids learn hockey.

I bought the skates from a crazy lady in a nearby town who sells them out of her huge garage in her backyard. There were so many boxes of skates in there that she could barely walk through it to find pairs for me to look at. She kept handing me these really crappy skates that were basically a hard plastic shell with a sock inside--possibly made by Fisher Price or Nickelodeon. Finally she pulled out a pair and said "Now, these ones are from Canada, and they're a bit more expensive, but--" I cut her off and told her that those were the ones I wanted.

I should add that in Canada I'm a terribly mediocre hockey player, but I'm considered a superstar here as soon as I strap my skates on. I've already been asked to join teams but I'm not really interested in shelling out a bunch of money for equipment!

In general, ice hockey is almost non-existant in Holland, but skating itself is quite popular. Speed skating ovals are scattered around the country and the Dutch come out in full force to skate endless loops around them. If the winters are cold enough you can apparently skate for miles on the extensive canal networks--hopefully we can do that this year.

Unfortunately I forgot to charge my batteries before the trip so I wasn't able to take many pictures. The first two here are from the outdoor speed skating oval. That's Job in the second one.

There was also an indoor rink which had the worst ice I've ever skated on. While everyone was allowed on the outdoor rink, no speed skaters were allowed inside, so most of the skaters here were pretty bad!

Lieselot and Thom:



Merel and Job:



Me and Thom:



Merel giving her nicest smile:

After skating around for about 15 minutes on the indoor rink, doing laps and zipping in and out of everyone else, I had a couple hooligans around my age skate up to me and, after establishing my language, ask if I wanted to "play" with them. It felt like something out of The Mighty Ducks (You know, when they find that guy who shoots the 'knuckle pucks'). I said "Play what?" And the guy said that they skate around and try to catch each other. I declined, officially for the reason that I was there with young kids, but also because tag is something you play when you're in Grade 5.