Dear reader,
The weather lately has been what it usually is: changeable. Sunny and clear one minute, raining the next. In one of those sunny moments on the weekend, my husband sat down outside in our garden and turned his face to the sun. Within minutes, he was back inside: “Too late. The sun’s gone.”
The temperature was something like 8°C, which is about 45°F: hardly sunbathing weather.
It occurred to me that this is a very Dutch thing (and probably British too, but someone else can write that letter). In a place where the weather is so often cheerless, the Dutch will grab every moment of light and warmth.
I remember first noticing this soon after we moved to the Netherlands. Waiting for our kids to come out of school that first fall, I noticed the other mothers – it was almost always mothers who came to pick up the children – had lined up, their backs against a wall of the school. All of them faced the same way, eyes closed, heads tipped toward the sun.
It made me think of sunflowers and how they turn toward the sun. It was cold out, but by standing against a wall to cut the wind and facing the sun, a tiny bit of warmth could be extracted in the moments until a cloud blocked the light.
Sun worship
The sun worship goes further than this. The temperature only has to hit perhaps 10°C (50°C) and people start sitting out on a terras, a sidewalk café. (I’m talking about normal times, of course, when the cafés are open. But I’m willing to bet this will happen the moment they do open!) They move their chairs around to one side so they can all face the sun. Often these cafés will provide outdoor heaters (Talk about wasteful!) or blankets for the customers to spread over their legs.
This sun-worshipping tendency is especially visible in summer vacations. The Dutch go south en masse to places where heat and, especially, sun, are virtually guaranteed. The south of France is most popular. So are Spain, Turkey and Greece.
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Getting a tan
I don’t actually know what they do once they get there. Many families take their campers along and stay in one place for the vacation. What I do know is that they must get a lot of sun. The white Netherlanders, adults and children, come back an unnaturally dark tan color.
This cannot be good for them! When I’ve gently tried to point this out, the response is usually either “But it looks so healthy!” (No, it doesn’t.) or “I needed my vitamin D.” (True, but eat some fish, meat, egg yolks or mushrooms, or take a pill.) And the result is a lot of damaged-looking skin among the middle-aged white population from those summers in the sun.
Anyway, I noticed myself doing the same thing this week. I was waiting outside the supermarket for my son to pick up a few things. It was about 6°C (43°F) out. The sun emerged from behind a cloud and there I was, leaning on a wall, tipping my face toward it, closing my eyes. It felt good – for the 15 seconds or so that it lasted.
For me, the damage is already done, from a youth in Connecticut spending every day all day at the beach or on a boat. But back then we didn’t really know about the cancer-causing effects of the sun. Nowadays, if I’m going to be out and about in a hot, sunny place, I’ll slather myself with at least SPF 20.
Even these days, when Holland gets more sunny days than it used to, the instinct to sun-worship is still there. And judging by those tans they bring back home, sun lotion doesn’t much come into the equation.
Election news
A quick follow-up on last week’s letter:
As predicted, the center-right VVD got the most seats in Parliament, gaining a couple of seats. The centrist D66 gained several. Left-wing parties like GroenLinks (Green Party) and the socialists lost a lot of seats. The extreme-right PVV lost a few seats, but that was more than compensated for by two other smaller extreme-right parties, making a net gain of about 6 seats for the extreme-right. These are estimates, by the way, until the votes are fully counted.
What I’m curious about is whether the gain on the far right is a trend, or whether it’s just an uptick in response to the pandemic and government restrictions like mask mandates and curfews. I suppose that won’t be clear until the next Parliamentary elections.
So the extreme-right gained, but not anywhere near enough to challenge the centrist parties, which are very unwilling to include the extreme-right in their coalition. It looks like Mark Rutte will stay Prime Minister and will attempt to form a coalition. If the VVD and D66 form a coalition, which they will certainly try to do, they will still not have enough seats to govern, so they’ll have to include smaller parties in the coalition. The suspense will come in that discussion; will they lean left or right of center? Various party leaders will meet and negotiate with the VVD and D66 and eventually the coalition will be formed. This process seems likely to take weeks or months. To be continued …
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Rachel
P.S. I write about independent travel at Rachel’s Ruminations. If you’re starting to dream about or even plan some travel, come check it out!