Inside the Het Jonge Schaap sawmill
LEIDEN
"In Leiden we also have mills, you know? One is a museum But I've never been... Karin She is a friendly Dutch woman who has indicated to us which train to catch to continue our journey. "We also have a Museum of Natural History , with a tyrannosaurus rex which is the best preserved fossil skeleton that exists, but now it is half closed for construction… And we also have ** the first University ** that was in the Netherlands; she gave it to us William I of Orange , grateful for the support provided during the Eighty Years' War".
The rebels resisted like wild boars the five months of Spanish siege. Little did the enemy think they would be sent encrypted messages hanging banners from the mills (a code that would be used again to warn of Nazi attacks during World War II). The victory over the troops of Felipe II is celebrated every october 3 . "That day is customary eat hutspot, a stew of potatoes, carrots, onions..." And folklore: according to legend, it is prepared with the food that the thirds of Flanders were left in the rush of flight . Karin gets off. The train continues its journey to Zaandam.
One of Leiden's still working windmills
ZAANDAM
De Zaanse Schans is a neighborhood of Zaandam and the most visited attraction in the Netherlands; although the intention of the person who conceived it was nothing more than create a reserve inhabited by rural constructions in danger of extinction. Houses, farms and windmills threatened by modern times moved on pontoons and trailers from the surrounding towns in a move carried out between 1961 and 1974.
Het Jonge Schaap (“The Young Sheep”) is a recent addition: a sawmill rebuilt from another that was torn down in 1942." Thousands and thousands of tourists come to see us every day "Abel speaks proudly of his mill and of his hands…" These are real hands, look at them! "Full of calluses . "Not like the ones he had before…" he denies the soft and fine palms of that dutch architect that he was fifty-three years old when he stepped foot on a windmill for the first time. "But when I entered one, I didn't want to go out anymore , here you see me!" Splitting logs. "Then I found out that My great-uncle had also been a miller... He carried it in his blood without knowing it!"
The machinery starts with a puff of air and the sweat of a man (or a woman, when it is the turn of the only miller he has as a partner). "If I like this mill for something, it is because requires strength to handle ". The muscles of the apparatus rotate phlegmatic, the rack leaves go down lack of oxygen; they are hardly able to finish the exercise; but, with weather conditions in top shape, they could saw a few twenty logs a day . The planks are good for make furniture , to cover boats and walls… "Elm wood cat piss stinks when you cut it, it sticks to your clothes, my wife always notices it; the larch is the one that smells the best ".
Typical Dutch buildings in De Zaanse Schans
On Fridays, Abel works at the De Bonte Hen oil mill ("The marbled hen"). There is another of this type operating, By zoeker (“The Seeker”), both from XVII century. Fortunately, there is no insistence on preserving the working conditions at the time. Many workers stayed completely deaf by the grinding noise of the grinding wheels, which crushed flax and rapeseed seeds on days of eighteen hours. They ate and slept in the mill, without time to reconcile with the family not even with the barbershop (the shaving chair with which they managed right there is still preserved).
in the absence of wind, did maintenance work ; if, once the beams and reeds had been repaired, it remained unvented, they sat idly by, without pay! The salary was piecework, and no one should complain, because they enjoyed one day of paid vacation (as Multatuli denounced: “Those who love injustice, because they live from it, they will deny that there was injustice , to amuse himself calling us Don Quixote and, meanwhile, keep his mills running”). The oil obtained served as oil lamps , also for soaps and varnishes; the European Union no longer allows it to be used for human consumption, so it is currently used basically for the production of oil paintings.
“Zaandam is a really special place, and there is enough inspiration here to paint a lifetime…”, he told her. Claude Monet to his friend Camille Pissarro. "The Dutch are quite friendly and almost everyone speaks French…” To round off, during the four months that the Impressionist was in Holland, impressed, the weather was good and he was able to execute twenty-five paintings and nine sketches. Obviously, he painted windmills , because it is impossible to dissociate them from the landscape and they have always found their way into paintings (and now into photos), ever since Bruegel the Elder and Jacob van Ruysdael to Van Gogh, Mondrian and Karel Appel.
Monet painted Zaandam twenty times
But perhaps the most famous are those of Rembrandt , whose father, by the way, was a miller. In Kat's ("The cat") still pigments are made with s baroque methods. "Artists come from all over to buy them," Mats, a twenty-one-year-old commissioned miller, is pleased. "We also supply them to the Rembrandt House Museum ", so that they restore his collection with the colors that the Golden age had at his disposal.
"The brown powders were obtained pulverizing weathered tiles ; red and yellow ocher, with minerals from Italy and France; the dark green of toxic alloys ... "Very toxic... Coppermade … "Given his optimal qualities as a preserver, he was also used to paint from typical green hue the wood of the houses. "The ultramarine blue came out of the lapis lazuli , which was imported from Afghanistan and it was so precious that it was quoted even above gold. "Ten pure grams cost fifty euros in the mill shop; one hundred artificial grams cost five." There is no other mill like it in the world, that's why it's my favorite, because it's unique ".
also unique By schoolmeester ("The teacher"), because there are no more mills that make paper, neither in Zaandam nor anywhere. It was made (and is made) from linen and cotton shreds (now largely imported from India) tamped down and dried with the scampers of the air , naturally. At first, the leaves were used mainly to pack, but they reached such a level of quality that their cross-border fame crossed to the United States of America to print copies of their Declaration of Independence.
If this mill does not receive many tourists it is because it is removed from the rest, ten minutes by bicycle from the Zaan's Museum . The unconditional mass of Japanese, Korean and Chinese (there are also Spaniards, but this time they go more unnoticed) choose to queue at the clog workshop and in the cheese farm, which thus, from the side, must seem like more authentic.
From Schoolmeester, the only mill still making paper
There is the option of stay in a B&B inside the park , in those little houses typical green ; but since this is about windmills, their thing would be to sleep in one. Of 1100 Snags It is in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Amsterdam. It has three rooms ; two of them are occupied by Roel and his son; the other is for guests, two people 120 euros per night . "I've lived here for eight years…"
essential to have miller's license for it. "And my daily routine consists of boil eggs for breakfast, teaching (I'm also an art teacher) and pump the water from the polder ", with which football and golf courses are irrigated. "It is possible bathe in the lake ; I train there for the triathlon… "his closest neighbors are a family of grebes ; there are also storks and spoonbills. "And cows, but they are not dairy, the rancher has them by distraction , to talk to them." he recites eclogues to them.
" The fields have barely changed since the Middle Ages…” The mill was founded in 1674… “But then it was somewhere else, on the road to Haarlem.” The name refers to distance (approximately four kilometers) that separated its old location from the Haarlemmerpoort , one of the five gates through which the capital was accessed in the XVII century . "They moved it here in 1965, because the level of the city had risen above the sea and no longer needed to drain ".
To Roel He has been passionate about windmills since he was a child. "I don't know if because where I was born, oddly enough, there were no mills , just a small pump". It barely receives countrymen among its guests; more than ninety-five percent are foreign. "But you don't need to come to Holland to see windmills…" he walks over to the bookshelf and pulls out a photo book . "You'll see…" he turns pages. "Here it is: Consuegra, Campo de Criptana... Isn't that Spain? "
The Roel mill is rented by the night
OTHER B&B TO DREAM IN WINDMILLS:
Oostzijdse Molen
Also called “Mondrian's Mill”, because the artist he painted it about twenty times . Original Construction Date: 1874 . Capacity for six people. Location: Abcoude (Utrecht). Price: 575 euros per night.
Broekzijdse Molen
It is in the same town and should be called “Mondrian's Mill 2” , because he also painted it. Original Construction Date: 1641. Capacity for six people. Price: 275 euros per night.
Blauwe Molen
"The blue mill" is one of the few mills run by a woman, Alice. Original Construction Date: 1772. Capacity for two people. Location: Rijpwetering (village 8 kilometers from Leiden). Price: 90 euros per night.
By Verrekijker
It's a bit off the beaten track, but the cottage is fine. deserves to deviate to the province of Gelderland. Original Construction Date: 1904. Capacity for 12 people. Location: 80 kilometers from Schipol airport. Price: from 1,875 euros per week.
Hunsingo Molen
This catches even further, in the province of Groningen. Original Construction Date: 1855. Rooms with capacity for two people. Price: 100 euros per night.
Tradition, modernity and comfort in Molen Hunsingo
*This is the second installment of the report _ Route through the most charming windmills in Holland (Part I) ._