Elfstedentocht!

Just a little interruption in the (almost concluded) saga of my Christmas trip to Prague.  In January or February, there is a wonderful event which sometimes happens in the Netherlands.  The Elfstedentocht--or the "Eleven City Tour"--is a great Dutch tradition which is over a hundred years old, although the race itself has only been run 15 times.  The race is a speed skating race around 11 major cities of Friesland--the northernmost region of the Netherlands.  If you go to this link here you can see a map of the whole race course.  This happens to be the official website of the Elfstedentocht where you can sign up to take part in the race yourself.  (It is only in Dutch or French, though.)

The race is run so rarely (and at different times of the year) because it depends entirely on the weather being cold enough to freeze all the canals and lakes over which the race is run.  This happens fairly rarely but every year the Dutch get super excited about it.  There are, even now, websites and news stories asking "Will the Elfstedentocht be on this year?"  It has been years (15!) since the last race and everybody keeps saying "Global warming means we will never have another race again!"  And then everybody is sad.  The Dutch take their speed skating seriously (in the 2010 winter Olympics the Dutch got more medals than any other nation in speed skating events).  When it gets cold enough, not even world war and occupation by hostile forces will keep the Dutch from doing the Elfstedentocht.  When the race is on, it is announced in the Friesian dialect which is quite different than standard Dutch.  It doesn't matter, though.  Everybody knows what it means.  "It giet oan!" means "It's on!" (the most accurate translation is "it continues" or literally "It goes on" but I think that "It's on" captures the mood of it better).  The Dutch version of this is "het gaat door" but it's tradition to use the Friesian instead.

The Wikipedia article on the Elfstedentocht, which you can find here, is really interesting and definitely worth reading.  It has information about the race, its history, interesting tidbits, and the record of winners.  One interesting thing is that there is a really noticeable increase in average speed and a really noticeable decrease in the average finishing time over the history of the race, presumably as a result of changes in technology.

There are videos of the sports-casts available as well that are pretty worth checking out.  I have attached links to the 1941 race, the 1947 race, the 1954 race, and the 1963 race.  (You can probably find videos of all of the race, actually, if you look "Elfstedentocht" up on YouTube.)
Most of them aren't too long (about 5 minutes).  Of course, all of the commentary is in Dutch but it isn't really necessary to understand Dutch to appreciate people tripping over their skates and tumbling across the ice.  It is interesting to see the changes of film-making technology, crowd size, and race procedures.  In all of them, you can hear the commentators talking about the racers getting their tickets stamped to prove they stayed on the course ("afstempelen") and getting drinks of hot chocolate ("chocolade") from helpful bystanders.

Wikipedia includes the 1933 race on a little 2 minute video as well.  I think that this may have been mislabled, though, as this video has sound, the quality seemed better than would be expected, and the interviewer at the end looked like he was wearing an outfit from the late '40s or '50s.  I could be wrong but you can take a look at it, if you want, and see for yourself.

In the 1941 race, it is especially interesting because it occurred during the German Occupation.  Throughout the the film you can see German soldiers walking around as well as what appear to be plain-clothes German officers.  Periodically you will see men, usually two together, wearing clothes that are a little bit nicer, and a little bit differently styled, and with facial structures that are a little bit different than everyone else around them.  I couldn't prove that they are Germans (although there were people in German uniforms around) but if I were going to make a film about evil Nazi SS men, those are the guys that I would cast.  This film is the longest (it is 11 minutes long) and it also doesn't have sound, so it is probably the least interesting of all of them but, if you're interested it is fun.  The film includes those silent-movie info screens with things like who is in the lead and weather reports.

The 1963 video is of the super cold race.  The Wikipedia article says that it was -18 (Celsius which means about 0 Fahrenheit) but at the beginning of the video the announcer says that it was -15.  In this video, they made the racers run up and down stairs to get over dikes and around open water (in previous years they had carried the racers piggy back or in a chair-hold) and running up and down tippy stairs in speed skates is always good for a laugh.  Toward the end of the video, a helicopter comes in and the announcer says that it is Princess Beatrix (now Queen of the Netherlands) coming to watch the finish of the race.

Even if they do have the race, I won't get to go see it live (apparently hotel rooms become impossible to find and local home-owners rent out rooms for people coming from all over the Netherlands) but, apparently, if there is ever another race it will be broadcast live on TV and the internet for everybody in the Netherlands (the last time the race was run there was barely an internet at all).

The Elfstedentocht has a huge place in the Dutch psyche.  If you go to this link you can see a little comedy sketch and song about the race.  Herman Finkers does a little five minute sketch about how hard it is to come up with a good song about the Elfstedentocht because if you make the story too miserable, nobody will want to listen to it but if you don't make it miserable enough, it lacks luster and the old timers get resentful.  It is all in Dutch and it takes a while, but it is kind of funny (he starts off with a story: when you go skating in a rink, you always skate on the left--he doesn't know why, you just do--everybody skates on the left, except for this one rink in this one little village where they skate on the right.  And that's how he ran into his wife).  The first verse of the song says that his grandpa did the race wearing only his underpants and barely even shivered.  He did the race wearing a whole outfit and he's still cold.  The second verse says that folks who joke about a thaw with the Frieseians, are likely to be found dead in a hole in the ice.  And in the third verse he says that they had lots of races during World War II, even though the weather was awfully terrible and when they ran the race during the Cold War, three skaters froze to death but that didn't bother them.  They keep on hoping for another race.

And, finally, the 1963 race, which is referred to as "the Hell of 1963" because of the cold (only 1% of the skaters finished the race and, as the song noted, three skaters froze to death), is the subject of a recent movie called "De Hel van '63".  You can see a preview of the film (which was released in 2009) here.  The preview is in Dutch, of course, but you don't really need to understand what they're saying to figure out the jist of the story.  I have, however, translated the tag lines that they pop up on the screen periodically, which will give you an idea what is going on:

the longest skating marathon in the world 

love and friendship 

will-power

hardship 

one winner 

thousands of quitters 

in the most terrible race in history
The race to end all races begins December 2009

I've got my fingers crossed that I'll get to hear "It giet oan!" sometime this winter.