Here comes summer:
After a winter and spring that seemed more like an never ending autumn, we suddenly had a very UnDutch hot summer weekend in May. Yes, summer is at our door. And with summer comes that OMG feeling -on the hips… read more >
Here comes summer:After a winter and spring that seemed more like an never ending autumn, we suddenly had a very UnDutch hot summer weekend in May. Yes, summer is at our door. And with summer comes that OMG feeling -on the hips and tums that is- Bikini? Shorts? Reality dawns... Its time to shed the cover of our winter layers.. asap It’s a fact that gyms are busiest in January (new year’s resolutions... which most people seem to forget about mid-February) and in May, when it all becomes painfully real, if it hadn’t done already thanks to the mirror and all those all the magazine headlines telling you to get that ‘ Beach-bod’ for the summer of 2016 But hang on… Beach-bod? For the few days of hot summer we have in The Netherlands? Are we really getting frantic about looking fit for these few days a year? Yes, a lot of us Dutchies are. Here’s why: You might have noticed a lot of us Dutch seem to have a weird sense of temperature: when the thermometer goes beyond 10 Celsius, some people are already walking in shorts and t-shirts. We yearn for physical freedom from our thick winter clothes so much that we just try to imagine that 12 degrees is warm enough. It’s also why we Dutch are somewhat specialized in dressing in layers: eventually the cold shivers will win from our imagination. So on goes the vest. And then off again. And then on. Maybe now a raincoat. And flip flops, why not? Apart from that, most of The Netherlands virtually lies below water level. That’s why half our country has a coastline somewhere near. There are sandy coastlines, not rocky, like in the UK for example. With a good windshield and a lot of… read more >