The Netherlands Part 2

    We had breakfast at Miriam and Thomas's house, then packed up and said our goodbyes. It is really lucky that we made it out of there with both kids. Thomas gained major points with the kids for not only having a Nintendo 64 but also a piano. Piper got her first chance in months to just sit down and play for as long as she liked - or until her brother insisted that it was his turn. Thomas is also very familiar with the games that Taran likes to play on the Nintendo 64 and was able to give him some tips on how to get through some of the trickier parts of games.

Taran with Thomas and little Emily
Thomas was showing Taran a computer racing game.

    We were headed to Zaanse Schans, a little tourist village about a half hour north of Amsterdam on the Zaan River. There are six working windmills there, three of which visitors can go inside. Nearby is a cheese farm, a wooden shoe workshop, and even a grocery store museum. Of course, numerous souvenir shops can also be found there. The whole place is crisscrossed with canals.

Zaanse Schans

    When we got there, the place was pretty empty. But within a half hour, swarms of Asian tourists descended on the place. We saw more Asians in that village than Dutch people. = )

    Our first visit was to the wooden shoe museum and workshop. 

Those are big shoes to fill -
but Andrew's got the feet for the job! = )

Now that's a big shoe!

In the entry is a display of wooden clogs and information on the history, different kinds and uses.

Map shows where wooden clogs are worn.

Fancy painted clogs

Strange clogs - notice the ones in the top right.

300 year old wooden clogs

Not sure how they wore this one . . . = )

Wedding Clogs

     When a Dutch couple got engaged, the bridegroom had a very important job to do before the wedding. He was responsible for making and decorating the clogs for his bride. The shoes then became a precious keepsake after the wedding. (I wonder if Thomas made Miriam a pair? = ) )     

Smuggler's clogs

    These clogs left footprints pointed the opposite direction that the wearer was going.

     The workshop had live demonstrations of wooden clog making. They said a wooden clog used to take 2 hours to make using hand tools. With the tools they have now, it takes only 5 minutes. They start with a chunk of wood - freshly cut, not dried out.

Chunk of wood

    Then it is shaped in a machine that works like the machines that copy keys - it copies a shoe shape.

Shaping shoe

A similar tool is used to drill out the inside. The shoe he is working on is the one on the right. He's copying the inside of the shoe on the left.

Drilling out the inside

Then the toe and heel are shaped by hand using a large paper cutter-like knife.

Shaping the toe

After that the shoe is dried for 3 to 4 weeks. (There is so much water in the shoe that when he blew into it, water squirted out the toe!)

Voila - it's a shoe!

     Then the shoe is sanded and ready for the foot of a four year old. Wooden clogs have to be much larger than the feet that wear them in order for the thick socks that make the clogs comfortable to be worn. They are waterproof and very strong. I think instead of steel toed boots, construction workers ought to wear wooden clogs to protect their feet.

One more picture with the wooden clogs. = )
I think they'll need a lot of thick socks to make those fit.

     Next on the map was the coopery where barrels are made. But they were closed up so we snapped a few pictures and continued on our way.

The coopery

Cute little windmill.

    After that, we visited the cheese farm. It was mostly a cheese store but they did let us see the room where they made the cheese (none being made at the time) and showed a video on how the cheese was
made.

The Cheese farm
Behind the glass is where the cheese is made.

There was a large variety of different cheese for sale in the shop and SAMPLES! Yum!

Piper with her favorite - gouda with herbs and garlic

    Most of us enjoyed trying the many different kinds. Taran, unfortunately, doesn't like cheese so he wasn't as thrilled with this store. There was cheese flavored with pepper, cumin, chilli pepper, fenugreek, and coriander. They even had sheep milk cheese. But my favorite was the pesto cheese. It was an interesting shade of green but oh so tasty. = ) We bought some of Piper's favorite cheese and a package of stroopwafels. Stroopwafels are two thin little waffles pressed together with a caramely syrup between them. They are a Netherlands specialty.

Piper enjoying her stroopwafel

    We strolled down the street enjoying all the Holland-ness of the place.

Windmills - what's more Holland than that?

This house really does have a moat surrounding it!
Okay, I guess they call it a canal here.

The green building you can see in the above photo is the Albert Heijn Grocery Shop Museum. This is a model of a store opened by Albert Heijn in 1887. Albert Heijn went on to become the founder of a whole chain of supermarkets with more than 700 stores across the Netherlands. And it all started in a tiny little shop like this one.

Albert Heijn Grocery Shop 

The inventory is just as it was in 1887.

Scales used to measure out dry goods

     Walking the other direction up the road, we came to the windmills. There is a spice mill, a paint mill, 2 saw mills, and 2 oil mills.

Paint mill

Stopping to take pictures of the swans

Interesting clash of old time houses and windmill with
a modern factory spewing smoke.

Sheep

     We decided to visit the paint mill. It actually processes dye to color paints. It's name is De Kat (The Cat). In 1959, G. Husslage joined the top and interior machinery of an old dye mill from the 1780s with the base of an old oil mill and the two became the new dye mill called De Kat. It is the last wind-powered dye mill in the world. It uses the power of the wind to chop up tropical dye woods into chips, then pulverize the chips into powder, then sift the powder.

Choppers

Edge runner stones that weigh about 6000 kg

Looking above the grinding stone at the
giant gear above it.

Barrels of dyestuff

Display on different material used for dye

     The edge runner stones were crushing limestone today. As you can see in the picture, everything was covered in white dust. The next level up we could see the many gears that transferred the wind power into grinding power.

That's a lot of gears.

   The third level up was only the driveshaft turning round and round. Taran found the top of a shaft that he could stand on and go round and round himself.

    The fourth level had window to peek out and a little ladder leading up one level higher. But this level was blocked with a grate and a sign bearing a skull and cross bones was posted on the other side of the grate. I think they didn't want us going any further. = )

Checking out the next level

Window is partially covered by windmill blade.

The forbidden level photographed through the grate

    We went back down to the second level where we could go outside on the windmill's "balcony". Getting back down was not that easy. There is only one ladder for both up and down. So if people are coming up - and there were lots of people coming up - there was no way to get down. We just had to wait until there was a break in the stream of people and hurry down. It was a good thing there wasn't a fire while we were there. We'd never have made it out in time. Anyways, we did get down eventually.

On the "balcony"

Looking up at the windmill cap

The railing on the balcony would never have passed American safety standards. It would be so easy to fall right off. I guess the Dutch are more careful than Americans.

The whole 15 ton cap of the windmill can be turned to face into the wind. The miller job is to move the cap when needed and regulate the speed of the windmill using sails and boards. Taran is leaning on the rope that secures the cap in place.

I know it looks like we are standing in front of a windmill backdrop but the windmills really were right behind us!

     Before heading back to Bruchsal, we picked up some lunch. The cheese store sold sandwiches made with their cheese and Dutch potato chips. We got a sandwich each and a bag of paprika chips to share. We sat outside to eat. A few very friendly chickens approached us hoping to share in our meal. We gave them a little bit of the bread. That turned out to have been a bad idea. One chicken thought he was free to help himself so, when Piper was distracted getting some chips, he reached out and grabbed her sandwich right out of her hand! Naughty little chicken. We did not share anymore of our lunch with the chickens.

That black chicken was the culprit.

     It was getting about time to head back to Bruchsal - we never know just how long the trip will take. It was suppose to be just over 5 hours but it always seems to take longer than the original estimate. So we finished up our souvenir shopping, took one last look at the windmills, and drove away.

I don't know what this sign means but I took a picture of it just for you, Robyn.

Always remember that the Netherlands is 100% BOB. That's got to feel good, right, Bob?

     Soon we were back in Germany. But it was early enough that the sun wasn't even setting yet. Weird. I did get a cool German sky picture anyways.

German sky

     Since this will probably be the last time we cross the Rhine River this trip, I had to get a picture of it and the strange looking bridge the goes over it.

Bridge over Rhine

Rhine River

      Then we got back to the flat in record time. It was only 7:30. We were only about 15 minutes later than Gertrude's estimate when we started. Amazing. We had time to eat a quick soup and sandwich dinner and watch an episode of MacGyver before calling it a night.

Aaahhh! And now I am caught up! We leave tomorrow early for our last grand excursion in this European adventure. I'll tell you all about it on Monday. = )