I seem to have moved country

Recent visits to the Altstadt of this town - or any street between the old part of town and the main station - always make me think that I'm now living in another country, that I've moved out of Germany. And why do I get that impression? Because all I can hear the people around me speak is Dutch. 

Last week, I walked along the Rhine from the Altstadt to the northernmost district of this town (from my flat to there - 14.7 km) and I counted 21 coaches in one car park on the river, and most of them from the Netherlands. 

Now, if you think that Germans are tall (you generally have to raise your eyes to look straight at their face), then you've not seen the Dutch. When speaking to them, you have to flip your head back; they are at least a head taller than the Germans. 

Even today, on Boxing Day, with all the shops closed, the centre of town was still flooded with tall Dutchmen and Dutch women strolling around.

As soon as the Christmas markets close, things will go back to normal, and I'll hear mostly Turkish, Arabic, Spanish and Russian again.

Bootlaces are not an optional accessory

Recently, I've started going ice-skating again. This entails a 30-minute cycle to get to the ice rink and a half-hour bike ride back home again, with 60 minutes on the ice sandwiched in between.

I've had my own ice skates ever since I took lessons in London many years ago. One thing we learnt was that you have to lace up your boots so that they fit snuggly all the way up the ankle. You might get away with leaving the last pair of hooks at the top unused, but basically, once you've tightened the laces around the foot, you pull them tightly around the hooks of the bit of the boot that goes upwards. The main thing is that your boot grips around your leg.

When I'm on the ice, though, what do I see? I see teenagers who think that they can do up ice-skating boots the same way as they do their trainers: they don't lace their boots at all. They sort of wind them round the bottom of the ankle, not using the hooks at all. And then they wonder why they wobble so much, why their feet are at an angle to the ice instead of being upright. 

When I see teenagers with badly laced boots, I want to go up to them and tell them what to do so that they'll feel more secure on the ice, but then I restrain myself as I've been told I shouldn't "poke my nose into other people's lives" and I let them get on with it. But I do feel sorry for them. If only they could figure out for themselves that those long laces and the hooks on the boots are actually there for a purpose and aren't an optional accessory.

This is how boots shouldn't and should look like:

Like living in a black-and-white film

These days, even in the summer, when I am out and about, walking through the streets, I sometimes think that I must have some sort of eye defect, because I seem to be living in a monochrome world: everyone is dressed in black. From head to toe. Even small children. (No kidding!) Even at the height of the summer.

And I wonder to myself what is wrong with wearing, say, a splash of blue, orange, red or green? Personally, I would rather die than wear a black anorak. All mine are red, because when the days are gloomy, you don't want to pile gloom upon gloom and just wear the most dismal colour around. You want something a bit uplifting, a dash of something bright and cheerful. At least, I do. 

Some people tell me that black doesn't show up the dirt, but there are plenty of things that will show up on a black anorak, such as bird poo and ice-cream, to mention but two.

It was similar in the City of London, when I used to pass through it on my way to work: everyone was wearing sombre suits, but at least there was some colour variation - not just black, but dark grey, medium to light grey and navy blue. All pepped up with white shirts or blouses and, for the men, a tie. But even then, I did think they looked like a bunch of crows.

These days, though, people seem to clad themselves in black in some sort of attempt to be self-effacing, to disappear into the background, to not be seen. I presume this from the fact that not only do they wear black, but they wear the most shapeless clothes around, baggy to the extreme. Like some human Shar-Pei,  a dog famed for having more skin than is necessary for its actual frame.

I miss the days when people dressed with some style and panache. With colour and an eye for what went well together. Nowadays, I walk along the streets with dark-clothed, shapelessly clad people that put me in mind of slugs and I think that I'm in some parallel universe, one that is a black-and-white movie from the time when Technicolour film had not been invented.

If there is one thing that the film The Wizard of Oz, a movie that is always shown on UK TV at Christmas time, and whose middle section is in glorious Technicolour, should have taught us over the years, it is that colour is something fantastic, joyous and uplifting. How sad that people have turned their backs on bright and joyful colours.