Summer is undeniably lurking in the corner but I am secretly wondering if I am fully ready to embrace it.

The change of season does not only welcome a new climate, but also a new mood, a new lifestyle, a new set of clothes, a new skin and a new body.

I am not foreign to summer as I have always enjoyed 365 days a year of warm weather in my past life. But after a long winter, soft spring and waking up in the mornings almost drenched in sweats, I conclude that summer can sometimes be unpleasant. More than ever in this part of the globe, where air-conditioning is not a common domestic device

The other weekend I was in Paris.

I was sitting outside this charming café by the Rue de Rivoli drinking my cold lime tonic and watching people passing by. I love people watching, well don' we all?

It's indeed a very entertaining activity, especially for us women who are always on the look out for chic fashion clues on the street. But like Bridget Jones, women in their mid thirties have this nagging, distressing, yet vain question swimming in their heads: how could I possibly wear that halter-back top she is wearing when I have just gained 5 kilos?

Being in Paris and seeing skinny Parisian women doesn't help either.

Summer is: the less clothing you wear, the better, which also means baring all those flabby love handles accumulated during winter.

Procrastination has recently been the name of the game and I know many women can relate. Have you ever tried holding off buying new clothes for summer hoping that the struggling diet will, maybe, just maybe finally work?

Discipline is indeed a noble trait. Don't you just wish stores would start selling it?

We still don't know where to go for summer vacation but I would hate to spend the holiday watching how other women are so lucky to be able to wear those sexy tops without having to hold their breath.

One time an idea on how to shed off a few kilos came into my mind. I told the 'Dutchman' that we should together try the new trend in the Netherlands - Nordic Walking. He laughed, and said, "No way, that is just so boring. I will stick to my roller-blading."

Sigh... summer can become so complicated these days.

There are also many women who do not really care at all. Huge flab handles, hairs whisking out from their armpits or patches of corns and calluses protruding from their sandals, they are just not bothered. Bless them. I wish I have such courage.

On a more profound level though, I have yet to understand why people are so freed-up physically. In the sense of... 'I don't care what I look like and I'm going to bare it attitude here in the Netherlands, and all over Europe'.

I still have to grasp how people can be so comfortable and free that showing their body and their private parts has become a mere act of self-expression.

Years ago, during a vacation in Spain, 'Dutchman' and I lost our way. After a few minutes of driving around, we found ourselves approaching a cosseted coastline. It has an inviting café-restaurant with a huge deck hanging above the beach.

We pulled up to the cliff, got out of the car and walked towards the establishment. Halfway through the descent, we realised that we were stepping onto the premises of a nudist beach.

I had never, ever been to one, so it was not an understatement that the whole experience sent shock tremors through my system.

Air conditioning is not standard in the Netherlands

The image of an older couple in their 50's, walking hand-in-hand, naked; strolling aimlessly along the beach, with only a knapsack strapped on the man's back and a tropical straw hat on the woman's head, still haunts me up to this day.

Sadly enough, by European standards I'm still a prude. But I know, in due time and with my Dutch surroundings, I will get over this. Perhaps another visit to the nudist beach here in Holland will do the trick.

A friend of mine once told me, "Since they were all naked, I felt obliged to show respect, so I stripped."

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15 May 2006

[Copyright Expatica 2006]

Subject: Dutched Pinay, Summer in Holland, Life in Holland