Buzzkiller

Summer is here and the time is right for dancing in the street.

That's what you'd think anyway. However, due to extremely high temperatures little dancing is hapening in Amsterdam these days. Neither is a whole lot else; the majority of us are spending our days sweating, complaining about the heat and begging for rain. Occasionally our prayers come through, but unfortunately the Allmighty forgot to lower the temperatures (women, sigh) so the rain simply turnes to a steam-like substance.

The heat had some terrible side effects. A big walking event that usually lasts four days (aptly named "Four Dayer") in and around the Dutch city of Nijmegen was cancelled after 2 people died and 300 needed medical attention in some way after only day one. The event is walked by something like 70.000 people (or more... or less.... my research is so good on this blog) and the bottleneck of the day ended up being a several mile long dike that was completely shade-less. A reporter later on asked the mayor if the event shouldn't have been cancelled halfway through the day, but he seemed to not quite get that evecuating 70.000 people would take more time than letting them walk it out (you will be happy to know an official inquiry is held on how this event was organized).

Other events, such as a four day biking ride through Drenthe, have also been cancelled (there goes my tv watching schedule for the week!) while a six day beach walking tour will continue as scheduled. Since beaches notoriously have little shade I suspect a possible repeat of the Four Dayer disaster. (On a side note; although it's horrible for the families of the two people who passed away last week, anybody who goes walking for 7 hours with 35 degrees celcius in the open sun is mentally unstable in my humble opinion). But trust me when I say that all that is not the biggest problem this summer.

What really bugs me are the f-ing musquitos.

I think they were there last year, but I can't imagine there were as many as this year. Either that, or this is the first year that the Musquito Travel Guide mentioned the wonderful and laid-back atmosphere of my bedroom, where there are not only beautiful walls to stand up against, but also free drinks from a guy who sleeps in his underwear (too much info?).

Whatever may be the case, the past few weeks I have spent my nights in bed trying frantically to sleep despite the heat. And pretty much every night, just when I'm about to doze off I hear a "Mzzzzzzz" sound going around my head. At first I try to ignore it, thinking "Oh well, it's only a bit of itching", but then the "Mzzzzz"-ing gets louder, and louder, untill it gets so loud that I'm convinced the mosquito is actually sitting inside my ear screaming his Mzzzzzing sound as if he's a fan at a Metallica concert.

And so I jump out of bed, turn on the light, wait for my vision to come and start hunting for the little black spots on the wall that I can hit. Which is not easy since I have killed a lot of mosquitos lately and my walls begin to look like the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan for insects. When I finally do find the little bastard, the trick is to kill it before it can fly off. If I succeed I can then sleep peacefully, but if it flies away, the result is a minute long chase of my trying to grab it somewhere in midair.

So... my biggest fear this summer?

That the neighbors across from me can look into my place and see me run around in my underwear moving in very mysterious ways and shouting "Die! Die you [expletive deleted]". It just can't look pretty.