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Published: June 16th 2007
So, we rented a car in amsterdam - got a 2 door ford ka, super cute and tiny and blue. marc drove - my last experience with a stick shift resulted in a broken clutch....yeah, i'm a bit special. so my maternal grandfathers family is from olst, a tiny village in the eastern part of the country. so off we go, driving, driving, driving. we get there and it's market day! so i think that we were the only people to actually visit from outside of the village in a long time - we actually found people that didn't speak english. and i'm happy to report that when i would go up to a counter they automatically spoke to me in dutch, made me feel like i fit right in. so at the end of the market was the herring man. we started talking, he realized we were american, hadn't ever had herring....so he grabbed one, gutted it, filleted it and served it to me with onions. it was a bit salty and really oniony - it's the dutch version of sushi - i ate the whole thing and it was very tasty. he wouldn't let us pay or anything, everyone was just super nice and friendly. we got directions to a campsite from him, got lost for a few hours after looking at the town's graveyards for any familiar names. the next day we were driving the backroads of holland and they are just beautiful - cows and canals and cows and windmills...very bucolic. so then michele and i see a stand selling olliebollen and we very nearly cause marc to drive off the of the road because we both so excited. olliebollen - literally oily balls, are dutch donut holes, but huge and really really oily, and really really delicious. i have to admit that i really enjoyed the food in the netherlands - everything that i grew up with - speculaas cookies, stroopwaffeln cookies, king mints, leiden cheese (that we actually stopped in the city of leiden for) and ollie bollen. so we indulged and didn't feel bad because the previous night's dinner was bread and cookies and heineken, totally balanced and nutritionally complete. i believe breakfast was the same. so after getting a little giddy about the donut holes, we continue driving, off to rotterdam. and then perhaps the most fortuitous part of the trip thus far - we see a working windmill and pull over to get pictures of it - there's a surprising number of windmills in holland but very few are ever turning. so we're walking around and a man comes out of the associated house and says, 'something something, 5 minutes.' so it's either get off my land or i'll shoot you in five minutes, or i'll give you a tour in five minutes, not quite sure. luckily it's the latter, so pete comes out and we get a personalized hour tour of a 16th century functioning windmill - and not just walking around ( and the blades will kill you if they hit you, it's no little tap on the shoulder, there wasn't a lot of wind and the ends of the blades were moving at 30 mph) but a fully interactive one - he explained everything. the actually windmill was able to be turned into the wind, so he let us turn it - it was basically a large steering wheel that you step on to turn, surprisingly difficult and he normally did it in his wooden clogs. oh, that's the other thing, men actually were clogs to work, we saw half a dozen men walking around in them and we got the finer points of finding a good pair from pete. it turned easy enough, just hard to keep your balance. so, after i did it marc pointed out that it was a layback, which would have made it a bit easier. so then we went up into the windmill (very steep narrow stairs with no railing, maybe a 45 degree angle and 4 inches deep, i got a little nervous in my sneakers and got a lot more respect for working in wooden clogs) and it was huge and amazing, the technology that was used hundreds of years ago - the primary reason why the netherlands was the richest and most powerful country in the world 400 years ago. this particular windmill was used to drain fields, literally to keep the netherlands dry. the beams were 3 feet in diameter, basically just imagine the inside of a watch but simplify it and make it 50 feet across, and that's the windmill. it was amazing - the millers used to actually live in the windmill to take care of it and keep it functioning, it is a matter of survival for the dutch. the inside of the downstairs of the windmill was maybe 100 square feet, with at least a third of that taken up by the huge gears downstairs - people used to sleep sitting upright in a closet - prevents accidental death due to stumbling into the gears when you get up to pee in the middle of the night. pete also showed us how he could stop the windmill - it was a huge disc brake and then it had an emergency brake that could be applied - this technology is amazing now, it's hard to imagine this being built over 400 years ago. and the roof was thatched, which is a thing of beauty (and expense, 80,000 euro but it lasts for 40-50 years) in and of itself. so then pete said he had to go to work, the tour was absolutely free, all three of us really wanted to donate money (he was responsible for the upkeep, the government helps some but i think alot of it is out-of-pocket for him) and would have gladly given him 50 euro for a tour like that but he wouldn't take anything. this was one of those days that you just can't plan - oh, pete also lamented that at the most recent G8 summit, the current practice of salting and drying eels was going to be forbidden, apparently salting a live eel so that the skin comes off while it's still somewhat alive is considered inhuman, crazy PETA people. all in all a wonderful day.
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Herring and Olliebollen
Kristin - sounds like it was a perfect day!! I can just picture you and Michele finding the olliebollen stand - I'm sure it brought a lot of excitement. I'm so glad that the windmill tour worked out. Lots of great memories. Be safe, miss you, love you bunches, keeping you in my prayers.