As mentioned in this blog entry and my comment underneath it, and in this article, the Dutch have some weird and wonderful traditions which seem totally normal to them, but which to foreigners are just plain wacky. (One that suddenly springs to mind is when shop employees say 'veel plezier ermee' when you buy something mundane like a new bin. 'Enjoy your bin'. Thanks, I'll do my best.)
This week I'm about to 'enjoy' another tradition - de avond vierdaagse. Over a thousand children and their parents from all the schools in the district go for a 5 km walk on a different route every evening for four evenings in a row. The first time I explained this to a Brit, they immediately asked "what, like a sponsored walk". Yes, just like a sponsored walk, except NOBODY IS SPONSORED. That's right, it's just for the joy of healthy exercise in the open air.
Well in fact it's just because. Because that's what we do every year. I mean it's not like children don't get enough exercise in Holland in the first place, what with 2x gym per week at school, swimming lessons (almost mandatory), other extracurricular sports (most boys seem to belong to a football club, our kids do judo and basketball) and clambering around the millions of playgrounds peppering suburbia.
Being in June, it's either pouring down with rain or the sun is baking down. The kids generally start out full of enthusiasm, but by day 2 a lot of them are fading half way round the course, and you can see a lot of sweaty dads with 6 yr olds on their shoulders, wishing they'd managed to arrange for 'essential' overtime at work...
Meanwhile what would seem to me to be a perfect opportunity to raise some serious money for charity is allowed to slip past noiselessly. Weird.
Then there are the peripheral traditions that accompany the avond 4-daagse. Last year I saw loads of children sucking on bunched up handkerchiefs. What the...? Turns out they had half an orange inside, with 3 peppermints on top of it, sealed off with a rubber band at the bottom. Ewwww. I was then told that this was an ideal 'thirst-quencher'. Yes, like leeches are the ideal treatment for disease. (The double whammy of glucose and citric acid makes me wonder if these kids have any teeth left after 4 days, not to mention all the germs they ingest after they've dropped the rags on the ground for the umpteenth time.)
Finally, on the last evening, as the group approaches the finishing point, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends line the route, as if it were a marathon, and hand the children they have come to cheer on ... what do you think? Bottles of water or sport drinks? Bananas or biscuits for that last burst of energy? No. They hand them something every child dreams of receiving - a bunch of flowers. You might be forgiven for thinking this was something some post-war civil servant dreamed up to give the Dutch flower industry a boost.
PS I got talked into volunteering to be a steward on this year's event, and I've just realised the significance of that in terms of the 'pouring down with rain' scenario. No option of staying at home and saying 'f*** it'. Looks like my integration into Dutch society will be coming one small step closer. Watch this space for updates.
