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@noah-cochran

I must have a sadistic streak to me, because I was smiling the whole way through reading that.   I especially liked the ten seasons part.

Of course you do! You’re a writer, we all do XD

Have you lived in the Netherlands your whole life?

Something like that. We moved here when I was about two, so yeah, the majority. My entire family is South-African though, and we still speak Afrikaans at home, though we haven’t been back in over ten years. (It makes the question “Where are you from?” very hard to answer XD It usually goes into some convoluted explanation instead of a straightforward answer XD)

It’s… weird. XD I’m too South-African to ever be Dutch, and so Dutch I can’t consider myself South-African. I don’t belong with either and I feel like an outsider no matter who I’m with. It’s very isolating.

I still really want to explore all that complicatedness in a novel, and I’am actually about halfway through plotting it. (That’s the Edwardian Pirates one for everyone who’s heard about it.)

@emily-waldorf

but it gets the “we’re survivors” feeling going very strong! (Which is so FUN, b/c you can brag about it to others.)  The coldest I remember is -40 C/F. I think there was a windchill. When you have even a breath of wind at that temperature, it feels like sandpaper on your cheeks. It’s too cold even to snow at that temperature.

LOL, I usually get bragging rights for worst weather, but you win in this case XD WOW, that’s awful XD

 (It doesn’t frost over. It freezes solid). I wonder if in some ways, being so cold makes things almost easier…we don’t have much of a freeze/thaw-never-really-frozen-never-really-thawed cycle. Do you? Do you get a lot of snow?

Yeah, there was a noticable occasion where the full ten-gallon bucket froze solid in one night XD That was last year too XD

It’s pretty much constantly freeze-thaw-rain-snow-cold  and every other kind of weather condition XD Nothing is constant, it doesn’t stay the same for more than a day or two. (Though we do have spells where it stays really cold for up to two weeks at a time)

We never get snow consistently enough to have it stay for longer than a day or two, and it’s usually powdery snow. It takes perfect conditions to get nice packy snow, and we seldom have a lot of that.

But powdery snow is fun! We had knee-high drifts last year and you could just fall over into it without getting hurt. Our small dog literally vanished without touching ground and we practically had to dig her out XD

The highlight of that occasion was when we were at the neighbors and we jumped from their ten-foot pile of sand (for a construction project) into like four feet of snow XD That was fun but very cold XD

Also…warm water to defrost stuff? *Shudders* You need like, water heaters or something. It isn’t that fun when the pump ceases working, and we have to track inside to get water for everything.

Yep! We have outside taps, but they freeze over when it gets too cold. And considering that that’s only about 4 weeks a year (spread out) it isn’t really worth getting an outside boiler.

Do you get to do “natural skating”–as in, skate on some frozen lake or whatever, or do people have to make skating rinks for you to skate on? (DID ANY OF THAT MAKE ANY SENSE?!)

It made sense XD

Half this country is a glorified ditch, there’s always enough natural ice XD

As far as I know you only get indoor rinks in the cities, because most cities have some variation of vaart (canal/large glorified ditch) that sometimes freezes over. Our neighbors (same ones as the aforementioned sand pile) have a large pond that’s perfect for skating. But I don’t think it ever freezes enough for you to skate on any kind of lake. It usually rains before that XD

Yes, yes, yes! GIRL, you could be describing where I live!!! I looked up pictures of the Netherlands flatlands, and it looks like home! I didn’t know that anywhere else was as flat as we are. I describe it like a table-top, or the bottom of a pan.

LOL, bottom of a pan XD That’s accurate XD Whenever we go to Germany I can’t help staring because there’s hills?? Like these big rises sticking out of the ground?? It’s so weird?? The roads go up and down??!!

Yes the WIND. (OK, I love wind. Even when it’s cold and it feels like it’s slicing straight through you like a knife, you got to admire it for its power, even if it does hurt big time.)

I don’t like it XD It’s colder than anything else and it’s kind of freaky when you hear it trying to rip off the chimney XD It’s sometimes so bad our parents used to tell us not to go outside because there might be flying debris.