wind chill < 0°C

get the snowplows, get the salt trucks!

It’s cold out… Quite early in the year actually. I can’t remember seeing snow in November in recent years. Maybe my memory is just like Swiss cheese, idk. Either way: I have to say, I think there’s something to it. I enjoy the cold. The short days, the early darkness, the walks through town while you can easily peek into people’s homes where dinner is being made, where the kids watch tv, where the last minutes of ‘work from home day’ are professionally being (mis)used. I especially like the combination of a clear blue sky and freezing wind, just like yesterday afternoon on my way to work. 

To get to work, I often take the ferry from Azartplein to Zamenhofstraat, also known as het oostpontje. You easily recognize the same people taking the ferry at the same time as you on several days, the captain re-opens the ramp if you happen to arrive just a few seconds too late, the ferry leaves only once every 20 minutes and it crosses the widest area of Het IJ, which makes for a wonderful 5-minute boat ride. As somebody who always leaves home quite last minute, I often hop on the ferry in the last 20-40 seconds before it leaves. I like to hang on the back deck of the ferry while most others hastily slip forward. Yesterday, as I was leaning against the sloping wall on that same back deck, with teary eyes from cycling, I was listening to Enya. So cliché, isn’t it. Haha. One cold winter day and he’s instantly listening to Enya. Well, so it happened. When I listen to Enya it reminds me of my childhood, specifically of the Enya winter CD my mom had. She would often play it on these dark November/December days. Somehow it’s stuck to my memory as a Christmas album, even though conceptually it isn’t. 

Well, when I arrived at work yesterday feeling all self-conscious about the whole Enya situation (recently I found out that people don’t take Enya’s music serious… or at least, not as serious as I thought they did), I quickly admitted to everybody that I went all in on winter and listened to Enya on my way there. They accepted it with a kind smile. I started working, the evening passed, and after work Josse, Maud and I biked home through the snow together, they (fully covered in snow and dirt) went to Kriterion for a beer and a jenever as I went to bed, only to wake up today still feeling like listening to ‘music for cold winter days’. I decided to quickly make a playlist that goes hand in hand with the iciness outside. It contains mostly new songs, released this year or so, with a bunch of older music to accompany them. There’s no Enya songs in there. Only some Enya-inspired music. Hmm.. maybe one Enya song after all… who can say…?