Sanctuary Of Random Keystrokes

These pictures were taken at a store selling Nijntje merchandise in Zaanse Schans.

The little Nijntje dolls on the bed looked like they were waiting for the Nijntje lamp to perform some divine act.

A lot of places are known by their cliches. The word “Dutch” evokes tulips, cheese, delftware, clogs and windmills. While we had experienced the first three, we hadn’t yet seen much of the other two except as souvenirs and postcards in shops that dot the area around Centraal Station. We were told that the deficiency was easily cured at Zaanse Schans – just a 20-minute train ride away from Amsterdam. On a rainy Saturday morning, we were there. After walking barely a few hundred meters from the Koog-Zaandijk station (the station closest to Zaanse Schans), you find yourself at this very modern bridge, crossing which is like crossing a bridge across time. The place is almost like an open air village-museum with some really quaint but very well preserved houses, small cheese and bread factories and even a clog museum-cum-workshop.

Albert Heijn is a big retail groceries chain in the Netherlands (their logo looks like the Devanagari ‘क’ and used to make me homesick during our early days here). Our first stop was a small replica of the first Albert Heijn store. It looked a bit like your average small-town neighborhood grocery store in India. They were selling prints of their vintage advertisements which we postponed buying for our trip back but never could make it in time.

We spent most of our time walking around the waterfont looking at the cute houses, tiny bridges, small gardens, open fields and of course the windmills.

Then it was time to check out the various shops and museums. The most remarkable shop here was the one selling antiques. An old lady was the proprietor and she looked like Miss Havisham had walked straight out of Great Expectations. There were two rooms full of all kinds of fascinating old things – from toys to porcelain vases to old table lamps to coat hangers of questionable taste.

In the second room inside there was a small closet with very old dolls. I must say it did get a little spooky.

The facade of the clog museum-cum-workshop leaves you in no doubt as to where you are and what you should expect inside.

The museum’s collection of intricately wood-carved clogs is not big but it still worth a look. But the part that fascinated me most was the live demonstration of how the clogs are made these days.

The machines are simple and ingenious, and if you have one clog, you can “clone” another one from a block of wood within minutes. The wood is soaked in water beforehand for a few days to make it soft. When the clog was ready, the boy giving the demo held it next to his mouth and blew into it loudly. A stream of water came out of the clog to loud, cheerful applause from the small gathering of tourists watching the demonstration. The clog would be left to dry for a few days before being painted and sold in the workshop. Or you could buy a freshly-made one for just €2.

Finally, it was time for that walk back to the station over that bridge across time. We kept looking back, vowing to visit again. Zaanse Schans might be a little contrived and a little over-the-top in its touristiness, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s beautiful.

Epilogue: I’ve often wished for photographs to communicate some sense of the smell of the place where they Were taken. Not here. The smell of fresh, wet grass on getting down at the station, was soon overpowered by the aroma of chocolate. There is a cocoa processing factory in Zaanse Schans and thanks to the fumes it spews, the smell of chocolate just doesn’t go away from the air. While it initially causes strong chocolate cravings (without any shops selling chocolatey things in sight), after a couple of hours it turns into strong revulsion. It’s the olfactory equivalent of replacing every article in a fat book (say A Suitable Boy?) with the word chocolate. Worse, the smell is only about 90% chocolate – there is a 10% element of wrongness – like old French cheese gone bad (if such a thing is even possible). The next time I go there, I will be a little more generous with my deodorant.

Pictures from a visit to Utrecht in June:

The façade in the backdrop is a printed facsimile. I had seen something similar 5 years ago during a visit to London when they where they were carrying out extensive repairs to St. Paul’s Cathedral.

It was a pretty warm day so we spent a lot of time around the Dom Tower.

The fountain in the garden of Dom Church carried these icons to warn people of the “non-drikability” of the water there:

The thing about potable water from every tap is that you need to call out every time you don’t want people drinking water from an outlet. Never mind that the water doesn’t smell remotely drink-able – but then neither does beer.

Gouda is famous for cheese of the same name. But that’s not what we were going there for. We love cities. Especially the resilient ones that retain a bit of their character after hundreds of years. When we read about Gouda’s 15th century town hall, we knew we had to be there.

And it didn’t disappoint. It’s a structure that looks right out of a fairy tale…

…one with not necessarily a happy ending.

The bright red panes attached to the otherwise monochromatic facade try to lend the building a jovial air. They kept reminding me of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland.

For € 1.5 you can take a tour of the town hall. You are handed a printed sheet of laminated paper with details about the different rooms inside the hall. You can then walk around at your own pace and soak it all in. It’s very life affirming to see these buildings in use even today. In one of the halls dry-run for a wedding was taking place – with two photographers and the fully dressed bride and groom in attendance.

We were free to use the loos too – thankfully they were fitted with 20th-century fixtures and didn’t cling on to the 15th-century past of the building.

The meeting rooms upstairs were even more modern but the stairs leading up to them were so worn with use that you could feel a depression right in the middle of every single one of them where hundreds of thousands of steps must have trod on. Framed posters with insignias of important personages over the years decorated one of the walls near the meeting rooms.

From the balcony of the town hall we could see the 17th century Kaaswaag or the cheese weighing house. The building now houses a cheese and crafts museum.

I don’t know how we got to the street behind the old church – just glad we did. One of the buildings there had a beautiful color relief above its entrance.

With an entrance like that, you have to go in and find out what awaits you inside. Just like with the town hall earlier, we found ourselves in another time. There were more reliefs…

…beautifully detailed life-sized statues….

…a gargoyle…

…the bust of a soprano frozen mid-aria…

…and a garden that reminded me of Alice in Wonderland for the second time in the day…

…inside which we found flowerbeds…

…and a coat of arms…

All in all, a place full of things guaranteed to pull a fantasy author out of his writers’ block.

The magic didn’t leave us for the rest of the day. We kept running into one beautiful building after the other…

…often decorated with colourful reliefs.

It seemed that for each such building we would see, there would be a park or a garden to match it…

…and a reminder that we were still in a town famous for its cheese.

Each weekend we try to find a new place in The Netherlands to visit. There have been weekends when something interesting in Amsterdam has kept us back, but with days as long as they are at this time of the year¹ and with our newly acquired off-peak hour discount passes bringing in big savings on train fares², the incentive to get out is very strong.

Two weeks ago we went to Delft. We see a lot of shops selling Delftware in Amsterdam and were quite keen to see the place where it all began.

Most cities here are very similar in their planning. The city center is a short walk from the train station. This is where you’ll typically find at least one centuries old church, an equally old (or older) town hall and the main market. While the high streets are unapologetically homogenous with the same handful of big-name brands, on weekends, the farmers’ markets in these cities make things interesting.

We started our trip with a relaxed brunch. It was a sunny day but the wind was a lot stronger and cooler than we had anticipated. Still, a tepid cappuccino is a small price to pay for a meal outdoors under the trees.

The stray notes of a string quartet practicing inside the town’s church pulled us in. The acoustics of a church are an integral part of its architecture. While they favour choirs and organs, they are often kind to bowed instruments as well. I could have sat there listening to the quartet ready their piece measure by measure all day long.

Delft, much like other Dutch cities we have seen so far, has a network of canals that run through the streets. But canals (lovely as they were) weren’t what we were here for. We had come to Delft hoping to find hundreds of small shops in every nook and corner selling the signature blue-on-white porcelain. Either our expectations were bizarre or we were looking in the wrong place because we didn’t see very many of those.

We looked up the street signs to the official Royal Delft museum. On the way we came across some beautiful houses some of which had tiny lawns in front while others made do with rows potted plants along the perimeter. We saw roses that were cared for, matched on every step by tens of species of tiny flowers that seemed to revel in the fact that they didn’t need caring for.

The Royal Delft museum’s shop had some very fine Delftware. There were a lot of pieces in colours other than blue too. Goes without saying that it all cost so much that I wouldn’t want to be the proverbial bull in this particular china shop. Perhaps one day we’ll visit again with the means and the intent of buying something – but then the chances are if we had the means, they’ll be diverted to the family travel fund.

p.s. Since coming back, the world “Help!” in The Beatle’s song “Help!”, gets replaced in my head with “Delft!” – “Delft! I need somebody!”

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1. The sunset today is at 9:47 PM. I am told days will get even longer.
2. ns.nl offers an annual off-peak subscription for 55€ that gets you upto 40% off when you travel after 9:00 AM on weekdays or anytime on weekends.