Winter

When I was young, everything was better. Or seemed better when looking back, at least. Sometimes I pick up an old video game, a Super Nintendo (snes) game for instance (from the last decade of the last century), and when playing it, it doesn't look as fabulous as I recall it did at all. Time did something with my memory, or perhaps my memory didn't progress the way the game industry did, I don't know.
With some things, however, it is a fact that they were better back in the days. This is true for Dutch Winters. We used to have real Winters here. With snow and ice! It was cold! You went out with your sled and only came back when your hands were almost frozen! And your mother made you some hot chocolate milk! And the ice-skating was so much fun, we used to live near a small stream, which didn't take too long to freeze over, so we were skating there most of the Winter. 
But now, those Winters are gone. We have only two seasons now: Summer, and Fall, the latter stretches out over nine months or so. It rains, and is a boring kind of 'in-between weather'. Drowsy. Of course it is colder now than it is in October or April, but it isn't freezing. Or snowing. If it was up to me, I would move this entire country a few hundred miles to the north. That's where the Winter is!

The Dutch are also obsessed with the weather, by the way. If you walk into a random grocery store and say "How about that weather, eh?", you'll most likely be discussing the weather with fellow customers for at least half an hour. It's fun to do when you don't have anything better to do. Like ice-skating... sled-riding.... *sigh*.