Zaanse Schans

We've been meaning to visit Zaanse Schans for a while, so when we finally had a free Saturday when it wasn't raining we were happy to finally get there.  Zaanse Schans, about 45 minutes in the bus North of Amsterdam, is a preserved historic village that is particularly popular for it's functioning windmills.  It is quite beautiful and although it is touristy, it is a different type of touristy compared to the city of Amsterdam.  

We started our visit with a tour through the museum which contains items and displays from the Zaandam region's past- a little bit dry but there were a few interesting things to see, including the reconstruction of the Verkade chocolate and biscuit factory.

The windmills were the main attraction.  There was 6 or 7 big windmills along the edge of the river which were open for tours.  We visited a saw mill called Het Jonge Schaap (the young sheep) and saw it in action, sawing a large tree trunk.

The wooden shoe factory was mostly just a shop, but it had a display of unique clogs, both functional and novelty.

There was also a live demonstration of how they make wooden clogs these days- not by hand as in years gone by, but with these 3D copying machines that can use an existing wooden shoe as a template for a new shoe.

A video of the wooden shoe copying machine

There were different types of windmills including a saw mill, spice mill, a flour mill and an oil mill.  It was a really nice walk along the water past all the windmills.

Just for something a bit different, there was also a preserved Coopery- a barrel making workshop.  It was cool to have a quick look inside and see the kind of professions that were at one time well respected but now quite obsolete.

We had a nice lunch at a little cafe, and wandered around the area visiting some of the other attractions, including the Albert Heijn museum (the first Albert Heijn shop ever built), a cheese factory and a bunch of other touristy shops.  Overall it was a really nice place to visit and is definitely on the list to take visitors to who want to see Dutch things on their holiday.

Friesland Style

Last weekend was my work's annual weekend away.  We stayed in a seaside resort village near Anjum which is on the Northern coast of the Netherlands, right on the border of Friesland and Groningen.  It's a very sleepy area of Holland with lots of farms, wide open spaces and big houses with backyards.  It's the kind of place that people who live in Amsterdam think is terribly boring, and that the only reason to go there is to go sailing.

The resort itself was very cool.  It was not a traditional resort with a big hotel, but had streets lined with traditional Dutch houses that were set up as individual holiday apartments.  We were lucky enough to get a house to ourselves (partners were invited).

The main activities of the weekend were visiting the seal hospital and doing a cycling tour of the area. The Zeehonden creche at the nearby town of Pieterburen was a place where sick and injured seals are cared for and rehabilitated until they can be released back into the wild.  The seals wee cute and funny to watch but it was really sad ti find out about the serious damage that humans have done to the seal population by taking over and polluting their natural habitat with commercial fishing and shipping passages.

The cycling tour was like a scavenger hunt on wheels.  Our team was given a GPS unit- not one with roads and directions, but one programmed with markers that gave a compass point and a distance, and it was up to us to pick the right roads to get to the next point.  In typical Dutch style, the cycling was easy because the bikes were good quality and the roads were flat, but it was quite a hot day and we were pretty tired by the end of it.

Spreek je Nederlands?

Een beetje... (a little bit...)

Fortunately 'een beetje' is a broad enough term that it can be used to describe my small vocabulary and broken grammar that we like to refer to as 'Dinglish'.  We took lessons earlier in the year but have been on summer holiday recently, and we start again next week.  I was doing some revision of last term's lessons and it's unfortunate how much of the content I've forgotten in just a few weeks without practice.

It is perfectly possible to live in the Netherlands without speaking a word of Dutch.  Ninety percent of your essential interactions are possible in English, and the majority of the remainder can be done in text where Google Translate comes to the rescue.  However as I attempt to become more immersed in life here, it becomes obvious how speaking Dutch would make life much easier.

Even though pretty much everyone speaks English, I'm discovering that not everyone is confident or comfortable doing so past the initial surface interactions.  I've found myself quite a few times recently in social situations where I am the only, or one of very few, non-Dutch speaking people in a group, and after the initial greeting and a bit of small talk (ironically usually including questions about how the Dutch lessons are going), everyone invariably reverts back to Dutch.  It seems that Dutch people don't really like speaking English to other Dutch people.  I can't blame them- if you can express yourself faster and more accurately in Dutch (to 90% of the people listening) then why wouldn't you?

Anyway, it's just more motivation to work hard on the lessons.  Back to the CD and texbook...