Lente!

It is Spring!  There is so much Spring out there it's hard to believe.  ("Lente" is Dutch for Spring.)

For the last week or so, highs have been 60, or almost there.  Lows have been around 45.  And it's been sunny.  So, so sunny.

In the Netherlands, in the winter, there isn't a lot of sun.  It is kind of dreary and cloudy.  But, after a bit, you don't really notice the absence of Vitamin D and light and sunshine.  You kind of get used to it and you don't really think about it.  (Although, every now and then, you notice that your skin has gotten so pale white you are pretty nearly glow-in-the-dark.)  And then the sun comes back.

And then it's all you can think about.
How lovely and sunny the sun is.  How pretty and sunny the sun is.  How warm and sunny the sun is.
Everything seems prettier and cheerfuller and nicer.

The Erasmus campus has completely changed--since the sun came out, you can barely walk through the quad--it is completely packed with students and faculty, sitting on every horizontal surface and leaning against every vertical one.  Everyone is soaking up as much sunshine as they can get, while it lasts.

As you walk through the city, people are sitting on doorsteps and benches and in their big open windows.  And they are all so cheerful and uncharacteristically smiley.  Everyone is loving this weather.

And it is so sunny for so long, too!  The sun comes in through my window and wakes me up so early--it woke me up at a quarter to seven this morning (stupid sunshine).  And right now it is six o'clock in the evening and the sun still hasn't set yet.  That is, as near as I can figure, nearly 4 extra hours of sunshine per day since the end of December.  (And, if this chart is to be believed, I can expect another 5 hours of sunshine per day by the summer solstice!)

Sunshine is just fun.  Fun, and nice, and sunshiny.  It is wonderful.  I am a fan.

I did laundry today, just so that I could have an excuse to stand around on the little rooftop patio that is outside the laundry room.  (Well, also because I was out of clean socks but mostly because of the sunny patio.)

Even the Market is getting Springy again.  The market beside my apartment is busy and full again, after the winter doldrums.  There's loads of fresh fruit again (presumably from down south somewhere) and the fruit and vegetable stands are taking back over from the fabric stalls and flea market stalls that had all the best spots over the winter, when there wasn't any competition.

I think I could get used to this.

A couple of days ago, an expatriate Dutch friend of mine posted this old song on Facebook and it seems so à propos.


I looked really hard to find the lyrics but couldn't find them.  Also, this is a fairly old song (around 50 years old) and I think there are some differences in pronunciation which make it difficult for me to translate very quickly (for instance, around :45, he starts counting his eggs and says the numbers differently than normal).  The jist of the song, though, is Springtime.  He sings about chickens ("kip"--Dutch chickens say "tock-tock-tock") and their eggs ("eieren"--it is pronounced "ay-er-en") and about chocolate eggs ("chocolade-eieren").  I think  that he also sings about sweets and cakes and gardens "because it's spring" ("omdat het lente is").  It is a very cheerful, springy kind of song.