Ice Fever

I thought I had a good idea.

Simple, but those are often the best. In the Netherlands, there have been skating reports on TV for a whole week now. How thick the ice is. When you can skate on it. Which city is hosting the first marathon on natural ice. What the ice masters have to say about it. Which ice rinks have been ruined by salt. How they’re doing everything in their power to blow the snow off the ice. How people end up under the ice. How skating tours are canceled because skaters fall through the ice (which just happened in Overijssel).

All for the sake of the skates. For the die-hard fans. And with a few exceptions (I know exactly one), the whole country is in an uproar. Happy that it’s possible, even if it’s just at home on a little canal or a small pond.

Here, nobody gives a hoot.

Seriously.

It’s been freezing for quite a while now (or at least—it feels like an eternity to me. January has had just 3 hours of sunshine so far. No idea where that’s going. But it’s not good for a person.). So, of course, there’s ice. And you can go ice skating, too. Because you can do that in the Netherlands, right? Even though the ice is worse than in previous years—here and there, it’s actually quite doable.

So I pitched the idea to the RBB. Just because I felt like doing a story on the ice. And apparently the topic wasn’t even on the agenda yet, so I was able to go ahead and do it right away yesterday.

A quick round of phone calls soon revealed: they don’t have ice masters here. Nor do they have ice skating associations (only sports clubs for skaters or ice hockey players). Nor are there any recreational authorities. The state government (comparable to the provincial government in the Netherlands) doesn’t have a clue either. The state of Brandenburg has no overview of the bodies of water where skating might be possible.

The only regulatory body is the Wasserschutzpolizei. They mainly check to make sure that boats still moored don’t get stolen in the winter, but they also keep an eye on the ice to some extent. And they’ll warn you if you can’t skate on it.

And, oddly enough, that’s not possible either.

I made quite a few phone calls. I ended up at one of Germany’s most beautiful skating areas—the Spreewald. If the ice there is thick enough, you can go on trips that are kilometers long. (Something Germans generally don’t do. They only have figure skates and ice hockey skates, and you can’t go very far with those.)

But it’s not possible there right now either. The ice is too thin. Too dangerous. Even though it’s pretty shallow there—there’s too much current. And even if we get -20 at night over the weekend, the ice still won’t be able to build up enough.

So not a single skater in sight during my trip. Ice fever? They’ve never heard of it here.

Apparently, there are still a few flooded meadows here and there where you’re allowed to skate. But I couldn’t find any of those very quickly yesterday either.

I did bring my own skates, though. But unfortunately—I was only on the ice for a very short while.

THE REPORT (an old-fashioned link)