Shaking off the winter blues

SPRING IS IN THE AIR and for the last two and a half weeks we have had some of the most divine weather, sunny and 28 degrees. It has truly been a dream and a welcome break from the gloomy cold cloudy winter skies. But this is Holland – so if there is one thing we know it is that it will not last!

We have been taking full advantage of the lovely weather of course and the fact that there has been a couple of public holidays over this period has made it even better for spending some great quality time with the family. Of course the first thing we did was to bring out the gas braai (yes the one we brought with us all the way from Beijing). It is illegal to light any fires here in the Netherlands and of course should you wish to, you would need to get permission from the Gemeente (Town Council) and all of your immediate neighbours. Gas braai’s are totally ok, and of course we don’t need to have a license to braai as I see is now the case with you guys in SA. What the hell is that all about?

We hadn’t had a proper braai for more than 18 months so for the next 7 days we had one every evening. The sun only sets at about 10pm, so we milked the conditions for all it was worth. It was amazing to see the transformation of my family’s mood as I started our first real braai in the Netherlands and it then hit me how gloomy we had all been during the winter months. For the last 9 months we had lived in overcast, cold and wet conditions – day in and day out, and although we were used to not seeing the sun due to the pollution in Beijing, this was not something we had experienced before.

We had heard about the winter blues before, but we thought this was nothing but a myth, until of course we realized we were living it in reality. I had also read some very interesting articles recently about “sleepy middle Europe” which spoke about whole towns actually going into hibernation in the middle of winter and the authors were in fact blaming this and the socialistic way of live for the developed parts of Europe’s poor growth. The articles spoke of towns in the North-East of France either migrating during winter or simply closing the towns down, with its inhabitants literally going into hibernation and sleeping most of their days away.

Now it is not cold enough for that to happen here in the Netherlands, but believe me the winter is cold, wet and dark most of the time. I now understand why energy lamps are such popular items in most shops – with people in fact having them prescribed by their GP’s to combat the effect of the long and cold winters here. I also understand why people are so keen on taking their holidays and getting out (en masse) across most of Europe to escape to places such as Spain and Greece.

I have never really thought about not working on a public holiday or of not taking a long weekend away and I was truly amazed to see how religiously people in Europe took these and then made sure they were somewhere where the sun was shining. I was also very quick to condemn these same people and thinking that the developed world truly deserves their slow pace of growth if people had these kinds of attitudes.

Now I am beginning to understand for the first time how close minded I have been. In fact I must admit that due to the fact that I spend so little time at home and am away most of the time travelling to different countries, I have been selfish in not understanding how the weather of all things could so seriously affect my family. Life is very easy here, except for the weather and I can now fully appreciate why the Dutch moan so much about it. I used to say they have nothing to complain about and thus can only moan about the weather (and the level of taxes of course), but I am beginning to change my mind in this regard.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a cliché I know, but in this case it is absolutely true. People here are religious about escaping to the sun when the opportunity presents itself, not because they are lazy, but because it is in fact essential. Coming from South Africa you never even give this a second thought, until of course you suddenly no longer have it.