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Finally it’s summer in NL… girls start to wear shorts, children are playing outside (actually, they do it even when it’s *@&^$ raining), and it’s great to do some outdoor sport.
What about skating? what about in Rotterdam? what if 20 km. are closed to the traffic and are just for thousand skaters? Well, it happens every August here…

Every August, when for sure, it must be, good weather (last year was cloudy and rainy, anyway) R’dam wednesdays are dedicated to skaters. Young people, less young people, retired, rookies, pro, mums with children, dogs, foreigners (the list is sorted randomly), everybody is on the streets wearing in-line or old fashioned skates and everybody participates to the Rotterdam Skate Night.
It’s about 20 km, traffic-free circuit, where everybody goes in one direction. A marathon. But in a Dutch way.
I mean, it’s more like a party. An occasion to be together, live the city in a different way, meet friends, have fun, in few words.
There’s the people, every color, age, fashion and sex (all the 3)… Music, carried by people themselves, or dj’s in specific spots around the circuit, private houses just playing loud their music or cars moving along with the skaters and making the groove for your legs… There’s a beautiful park where to stop halfway, where you can get refreshments for free (ice tea, sponsor, but who cares?… why can’t I get water?) and to crash down and free your feet for a while… There’re the people watching along the track, screaming, partying, pushing you to skate faster and harder, sharing all this with you, but without skates…

And then, when you reach the end, when you made it, when you’re tired and your skates are heavy, when you can say ‘I was there’… you simply want to start over

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 5th, 2004 @ 8:10 pm and is filed under chronicles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.