Elfstedenkoorts.

Elfstedenkoorts means "11 City Fever" as in "still really, really, really hoping that the Elfstedentocht will go after all".  Despite the fact that it got up to about 48 degrees today (and has been above freezing for the better part of the week) Twitter is still full of people with "Elfstedenkoorts".

Some people have developed a nasty sense of humor.  For the last little bit, people have been posting things like this:

"BREKEND: It giet oan!  Hee, het ijs is 15 centimeter!"

BREAKING NEWS: It's on!  The ice is 15 centimeters!"

(15 centimeters is the minimum ice depth required for the race to run.)

And then they had pictures of this.

As far as advertising campaigns go, this seems crueler than most, considering how close we got this year.  

("IJs" is used both for ice and for ice cream.  This is 15 centimeters (about 6") of ice cream for about 75 cents, which actually isn't that bad--it's cheaper than McDonalds, I think.)

Some people decided to use their disappointment for more productive ends.  

Check out this video of four folks doing the Elfstedentocht route (or at least part of it).  It is about six and a half minutes long, but I think it is worth watching.  For one thing, it is tiring to see them skate for just those six and a half minutes--just imagine what it would be like to skate like that for six and a half hours!  These four folks (a Friesian couple, a fellow from the Northern corner of Belgium, and one other fellow) took the trip on February 11th.  

They were undeterred by the bright sunshine, the fact that the snow had melted off the banks of the canals, the fact that there was standing water on the edges of the canals in several places, or the fact that, at one point, they were skating through standing water.  They had to duck to skate under low bridges, get down on their hands and knees to crawl under really low bridges, and run around other bridges, in their skates.  There were a lot of folks out on the ice at the same time.  

At one point, they stopped for a snack of koek and chocolademelk--which is the traditional snack of the Elfstedentocht.  The koek is kind of like a little apple tart and chocolademelk is a very sweet version of chocolate milk.  The one fellow is very enthusiastic about his chocolademelk.  

Maybe I haven't posted enough things with Dutch folk talking for you to be able to notice, but all of these folks talk weirdly--they have very distinct, and fairly unintelligible, accents, which is funny to hear.  They also spell things differently, as I noted before.  For instance, at one point, there is a label which says 

"Dene Belg op zyn'e knibbels!"

These are not Dutch words, or at least not the way I learned them.  (On a side note, there is no "y" in Dutch.  That "y" is really the "ij" diphthong.)

I think  that what they were saying is "The Belgian on his knees!" which fits the context and the Nationalist discourse between the two nations.  (People still remember that the Belgians thought they were too good to hang around with the Dutch.)  But in Dutch this would it would say this instead:

"De Belgische op zijn knieën!"

At one point, they got lost (the label says "in Arum de verkeerde afslag genomen") and they had to get directions.  The Friesians were the ones that asked the locals and they speak Fries (I know this because the label says so) and it is entirely not understandable, at least for me.

These Dutch folk take their ice skating seriously.