In Kinderdijk there are 19 windmills declared a World Heritage Site
Hopefully they're still on the horizon tomorrow and the day after , because they have been turning for centuries and centuries... Only when there is not enough wind blowing they take a break. August days work slowly; they wake up from their siesta lethargic; it is the cachaça of summer, time we visit these three Dutch towns to find some of the best specimens.
KINDERDIJK
"This afternoon there will be a storm," he warns Peter Paul Klapwijk with the safety of a Meteosat. "It shows in the sky." live to 2.10 meters below sea level... "And next year we will sink another centimeter…", in one of the nineteen mills of kindergarten declared World Heritage "Before there were twenty, but the shaft of one was damaged; it is not very clear what happened…"
If it weren't for Florencio, this town - and two-thirds of the Netherlands - would be a flooded quagmire . It was this earl Floren V - who, in 1277, agreed with the nobles of alblasserwaard so that they would put aside their disagreements and cooperate in the construction of a network of canals and drainage , making use of one of the oldest democratic institutions in the country: the Water Board, whose vital task was and still is keep your citizens' feet dry.
The council considered various methods, until realizing that the wind mills they were the most prolific mechanism to keep the polders (the marshy land reclaimed from the sea) clean. They stopped depending on which way the air blows when installed state-of-the-art pumping stations . "With the power of a single electric machine, they evacuate fifty cubic meters of water per minute ; the equivalent of the work of twenty four mills ".
In summer almost they don't need to pump ; That is why the blades stop in the form of an X, which in the miller's language means long pause ; if they will only be quiet for a while, they nap in the form of greek cross. They are decorated with pennants to celebrate festivals like King's Day (April 27), the liberation day (May 5) or the **National Day of the Mills** (second Saturday of May).
When Feyenoord Rotterdam won UEFA in 2002, Peter Paul decked out his windmill with the team flag and stopped the propellers in jubilation mode ; that is, with a piece of wood pointing to one o'clock. He happened to strike eleven when his mother-in-law, old miller ArieStam, passed away; he was eighteen months in mourning position . "Normally it's 100 days, but this is a very conservative Protestant area."
The sunset is more beautiful in Kinderdijk
ArieStam was a man of strong habits. "What a war had passed he licked the plate until not a crumb was left; but he never ate spaghetti or pizza, he just beef, boiled potatoes, cabbage and beans ". Minimalist kitchen. "Neither onions, because, according to him, they were not mentioned in the Bible". Some verse would be skipped… " He did not miss mass on a Sunday ". Neither he nor the other residents of Kinderdijk. "He was one of the few Dutch people who went with wooden clogs yet. Is he more comfortable shoes for walking through the mud; My wife and I use them too.
peter paul learned the trade for love, when thirty years ago he fell in love with the miller's daughter and got married. Since then, De Hoge Molen (“The high mill”) is his house. Neither this nor the other fifteen inhabited mills can be visited, for obvious reasons of privacy; but there is two open as a museum (and soon there will be a third) . One of them belonged to the Hoek family.
"Cees -the miller- had thirteen children when he was widowed; his wife, Alie, died hit by a blade..." There is only five beds; the marriage one, as dwarf as the others; for the pieces to fit, several children had to sleep on each cot , lulled by a gale of gears. "A legend explains why Kinderdijk is called that: “child's dam”…"
happened in 1421 , that historic night when the North Sea raged; the dams were not enough to placate his outburst and dozens of villages were devastated by a catastrophic flood that took thousands of lives ahead. Surprisingly (from here on, the sources are no longer to be trusted), a baby was saved in Kinderdijk, thanks to a cat who watched over the straw cradle not shipwreck. "They say her name was Beatrix…" The baby, not the cat. " Beatrix de Rijke ... But it's just a legend, I don't believe it ". The point is that there a bassinet floating among water lilies. Someone has planted clouds in the water.
Peter Paul moves through the ponds with a silent motorized raft. "Being a miller was much heavier in the past; now it's almost a hobby cannot be compared". Perhaps the hardest thing is to obtain the license... "It was hard for me five years , but you can get it out perfectly in one". At first they frisked him. "It's just that the exam is very hard you are two hours maneuvering, with a jury around asking you questions. "Who invented windmills?" Dhr. Wind! ", he gets pissed off.
The legend rests in the waters of Kinderdijk
In theory, the crusaders brought the idea of the Holy Land to Spain, and the novelty must have reached Holland at the end of the twelfth century. "It was the first great machines used by man" . The oldest in Kinderdijk dates from the century XVI ; the others were built around 1740, which is when the country became the Silicon Valley of the Modern Age ; they were Europe's experts on the subject; nowhere else was there like mill Density, and nowhere else did they know how to get so much out of them.
They were the times of Dutch East Indies ; cloves and nutmeg arrived from Indonesia at the port of Rotterdam , the largest in Europe , and then processed in mills such as **De Lelie (“The Lily”) and De Ster (“The Star”)** , located on the shores of the KralingsePlas, a lake about three kilometers from the city center. They are the only ones they continue to grind spices and tobacco active, although its activity is limited to second saturday of every month (with the previous acquiescence of the wind, of course) and its production is reduced to covering the shelf of an improvised souvenir shop . There is no snuff left; snorting weed has been phased out by EU regulations.
Spend a burst of spicy rain with curry, cinnamon and some pepper . "When I walk into the house they know what I've been grinding by the smell of my monkey." Jan works here as a volunteer. being miller's son , he goes up and down steep stairs to the vertigo since childhood. climb the blades It is another skill of the guild, to hoist and lower the sails that regulate the intensity of the wind; with the rudder the head is luffed to windward, as if the mill were that sailboat that dreams of setting sail on the pond in ambush where the locals like it browse.
It is his favorite place to paddle boarding and swimming, run through the forest, spy on fawns, feel tulips in the grass, horse riding and park the bicycle to eat in restaurants like De Tuin van de Vier Windstreken ("The garden of the four cardinal points"), which is the house where they lived the owners of De Lelie and De Ster in the 19th century. If it's sunny, better reserve a place on the terrace with advance. And for snack, a lady crepe in By nachtegaal ("The Nightingale") .
A river walk is perfect to get to know the area
SCHIEDAM
Schiedam is the city of mills and gin by label, and it is twenty minutes by bike from Rotterdam (ten by train, in case it is true that it starts to rain) . There came to be about four hundred distilleries in his day and a score of mills that supplied them rye, corn, barley and wheat.
Today there remain three distilleries (plus a **Gin museum**) and five of those mills. They could all work, but only one , De Vrijheid (“Freedom”), real curra: grinds grain for Herman Jansen Beverages and for bakeries like Vlaamsch Broodhuys . But it is very expensive keep the tradition , for that reason the rest are monuments of profession; amusement windmills , the highest in the world.
By Noord (“El norte”) holds the record*: its tower measures 33.3 meters and now it's **a restaurant** (highly recommended the starter fishplatter : whiskey cocktail shrimp and jenever-marinated salmon) . When it was raised in 1803, By palmboom (“The palm tree”) complained because it intercepted the wind currents, violating his right to "free wind" , feudal regulation that prohibited plant trees or buildings near a mill. The litigant neighbor houses today a museum to get to know the grinding from the inside, although, attention: in 2018, the exhibition space will move to By walvish , "The whale".
Take your visit as an example and see others outside chartering ** a river ride ** for one hour touring the Old Town down the channel Part of the same museum and could be even more fun if they caught the captain's jokes Humor (in) Dutch (facilitate an explanatory sheet in English, German and French, but they haven't translated the jokes in it).
*By Nolet he is taller, but his 43 meters do not count in the ranking of traditional mills because it was built as a distillery in 2006. Although it looks old like that when seen from the outside, it is equipped with modern technology and use the wind to get electric power. In this way it produces gin, gin and vodka The family business with the longest history in the Netherlands: 326 years of aging.
In Schiedam, windmills and gin
DORDRECHT
"Yours will be the tallest, but… ours is in the oldest city in Holland ! Welcome to **Kyck over den Dyck**, the only mill in **Dordrecht**". Huib Dane is the engineer who took care of restore it , taking advantage of all the beams what could of the original… "Original? What is original? The mill is from 1713 , but replaced a previous one that fell apart and it was sold in pieces , which was quite normal... Now providential permission is required to any reform that you want to do. let it go to genesis who wants originality! The only constant is change ".
a few left one thousand two hundred mills of the ten thousand that were in the Netherlands. Its decline began when it was invented the steam machine, and raged with him combustion engine. "They're not profitable anymore..." Dyck's Kyckover is rented out for parties and events. "We need money to support him…" One day a week still grind grain. "Surely, in a factory It would be cheaper...
a group of volunteers sells flour and other baked goods on Saturdays. "But that's the least of it: this mill is a symbol of craftsmanship; of respect for the material, the environment, the people... His social function is more important than the building itself, because buildings are built today and tomorrow they disappear ". He goes out on the roof to review yesterday's horizon. He looks for contingent alterations. He notices the Rotterdam skyline , which fades...
The silhouette of Dutch Windwheel it will loom in the distance of 2020; will be a floating wheel gigantic enough **(173 meters) ** to house 72 apartments , 160 hotel rooms and 40 viewpoints that will breathe with wind, hydraulic and solar energy. The project was conceived by the architect Doepel Duzan as a habitable ecosystem that generate more megawatts than it consumes, in a country where wind turbines produce only 5% of electricity (in Spain it is around 20%). The Dutch of the 19th century took more advantage of the wind.
* This is the first installment of a report that will be completed with two more locations: Leiden and Zaandam.
Soon, the Rotterdam skyline will be drawn like this