Thursday, 30 March, Kinderdijk: déjà vu, but not from a barge

Written 26 March 2023

We stayed overnight in Rotterdam, for the benefit of those who wanted to go ashore and sample the night life, but the "all aboard" call was for 6:15 am, and we cast off at 6:30 am and cruised back along the Noord to Kinderdijk.

I planned to have poached eggs for breakfast, but they lost my order, and our tour left early, so I had to fall back on the normally excellent scrambled eggs on the buffet; unfortunately, they were not up to their usual standard—clearly something wrong in the kitchen.

We got to Kinderdijk, at the confluence of the Noord and the Lek, at 8 am, turned left on the Lek and moored there, nose to nose with the Viking Lofn. Our tour started at 8:15 am, so we put on all our layers (it's a windy spot, and it was a cold day) and climbed the gangway to the top of the dike separating the river from Kinderdijk. The right-hand photo shows the view from there.

We visited Kinderdijk last fall, aboard the Viking Vidar. On that occasion, I forget just where the ship dropped us off, but we arrived at Kinderdijk by bus rather than mooring right beside it. I wrote up that visit in my diary entry for 11 October 2022, so rather than repeating all the background I covered there, I'll just recommend that you click on the link and (re)read that account first (as I have just done) before going on to finish this entry. On that visit, we took the "regular" walking tour combined with a visit to a dairy that made Gouda cheese. This time, we were able to get spaces on the vintage barge tour instead.

The ship was moored parallel to the road we arrived on back in October, so the walk down into Kinderdijk was the same we took then, except that we had to climb the dike and cross the road first. The charming statue commemorating the event that gave the place its name had been removed and sets aside for some work on the canal, so I'm glad I got (and posted) a photo of it last time. We did learn that the flood it commemorates was in Elizabethan times.

Our barge, the Jantina was waiting for us next to the visitors' center, and to our relief, it was covered and glassed in. (The building in the background is the one with three huge Archimedes screws that I posted a photo of in October.) The Jantina was built in 1895 as a cargo boat, and in 1942, the owner put in a small diesel engine. Sometime later, it was sold to the Maritime Museum in Rotterdam, and the foundation that runs Kinderdijk bought bought it from them for 1 euro. Ten volunteers spent 3 months renovating and painting it. It has two small electric motors, one in front and one in back. The wheel is only ornamental; it's steered with a lever. On our tour, we had to go under a bridge with 25 cm clearance on each side; I did notice a few scratches on the bridge. Someone has painted a little white vertical stripe on each bridge that the captain can line up with the tiny flag mast on his bow, to keep to the center of the channel.

The mill shown at the right is one of the eight brick ones on the "low" side of the canal, mostly built ca. 1738. The mill you can see farthest to the right in the photo is a real, full-sized one far in the distance, but the one between the two, with the blue top, is a miniature mill, right next to the full-size one. Each of the mills has a miniature next to it, which the miller originally used to train his sons, starting about age 3, to be millers. This one seems to be missing a couple of its arms.

The mill we were headed for it shown here at the left. It's the oldest one in Kinderdijk, way out at the end of the line of brick mills, built in 1630, back when they were still using this wasp-waisted design. It's now a museum (one of three in the complex), but it was occupied up until the 1970's.

At the left is a view of the line of octagonal wooden mills on the other, the "high," side of the canal.

In the wasp-waisted mill, the miller lived in the lower, brick part, and the entire wooden hut on top was turned to face the wind. The children might also have slept up there. It's now the museum office.

Here's a nearer view of "our" windmill. The outside staircase up to the wooden hut, besides providing to the hut's door, attached to the mechanism that turns the hut to face the wind, so it doesn't actually touch the ground at the bottom but turns with the hut and the sails.

At the right, the docent demonstrates the little "table" extending from the staircase a few steps up that allows the miller to use his weight and his large leg muscles to turn the windlass that rotates the mill, if pulling it around with his arms from the ground isn't sufficient.

At the lower right corner of the photo, you can see the top of an open wooden cabinet fitted with shelves and stacked with dishes. It sits on a little concrete slab down at the water's edge, allowing the miller's wife and her daughters to do their dishwashing right in the canal.

At the right is another old-fashioned feature of this mill; the scoop wheel is outside the structure. The wheel turns counterclockwise, as viewed from this side, and the boards scoop water from a narrow channel below into a similar, but higher, channel to the left (covered by the wooden slats at the lower left corner of the photo. This mechanism can only lift water so high, so two rows of windmills were needed at Kinderdijk, one to lift the water from the level of the fields to a reservoir canal (ca. 30 cm) and another to lift it from there into the river.

The polders off to the side to our right are a meter and a half lower than we are on the canal and are sinking slowly.

Today, when they need to work the mill to keep it in good order, but it's too dry to pump, they can disconnect the water wheel and run the sails without it.

Back in the day, the millers were paid only when they pumped, so to cover windless days, sick days, etc., they were always on the lookout to supplement their incomes and their larders from other sources. Clever millers placed fish traps in the channels under the wheel to catch eels for the table or for sale.

When we were here in October, the day was flat calm, so we never saw a mill in motion, but this day was quite windy, so the docent/miller tugged the rope that released the brake and set the mill in motion for us. He didn't have to unfurl the canvas, because in today's stiff breeze, the blades alone were enough to turn the arms at quite a good clip. Apparently the goal on a really good day was to get 30 revolutions a minute. The docment mentioned that this mill is actually now the most efficient of the group, because its blades have been fitted with sheet-metal cladding optimized like airplain wings.

Across the lower canal from us, a woman rode by on this lovely golden pony. I have a vague memory that the guide last fall said that the area is patroled by mounted police, but I don't know whether this could be the patrol or just a private citizen out for a pleasant morning ride.

When the mills were built, they were owned by the surrounding farmers, who paid the miller's salary (farmers still own the fields, but the mills belong to a preservation foundation). Most of the farmers raised cattle for milk and cheese, and another way the miller could supplement his income was by trapping moles for the farmers. Inside the mill, the docent showed us the board in the right-hand photo. Clipped to the top is an iron mole trap that could be shoved into the soft soil around a mole run and snap shut when the mole ran by. Millers also kept Jack Russell terriers to help with catching moles and rats. Stretched on the board are a couple of mole skins, skin side out. Moles have very fine, dense fur, and cured moleskins were saleable for use in making gloves and other apparel (and sometimes as padding in shoes, hence the soft "moleskin" fabric now made and sold for that purpose).

If Dad was out working in the fields, he could leave a son to tend the mill, telling him, e.g., "Watch Mr. Kuiper's mill across the way. When he puts up canvas, you put up canvas. When the turns his mill, you turn ours." Young boys knew how to run the mill but were not always heavy enough, e.g., to pull the rope hard enough to release the brake or to turn the windlass. They would sometimes have to load their pockets with stones, climb onto the table and jump off holding the brake rope or stand on the arms of the windlass to turn it.

On good pumping days, and when water was especially high, the miller might be up pumping all night. He would sit at the kitchen table mending his fish traps and listening to the gears; he could tell from the sound whether he needed to go out and adjust something.

At the left here is a view of the mill's one bedroom; children slept upstairs in the hut.

At the right is the interior of the separate cookhouse. The object on the near corner of the upper blue shelf is half of a split wooden shoe. According to the docent, a pair of wooden shoes will last for years in the fields, but after 3 months on concrete, stone, or pavement, they split lengthwise. In the back left corner of the kitchen a number of split shoe halves are piled on top of the firewood, to make themselves useful one last time by heating dinner. The shoes are made of willow or poplar and were hard carved before the invention of the machines that produce them today.

Laundry was done outdoors, with this washboard and hand-cranked wringer.

The occupants of this mill also kept a vegetable garden, about half of which you can see here. Museum volunteers keep it planted these days with cabbage, onions, and other vegetables and herbs. The mint was flourishing.

Beyond the garden were the rabbit hutch and beyond that the pen for goats. Both rabbits and goats are still kept there by the museum volunteers.

So is a henhouse, with a couple of hens, not pictured here.

At the left here is this mill's miniature training mill. Unfortunately, it's sails had been removed (perhaps for repair), but you can see a little more detail of it in the edge of the photo of the goat pen.

Out in the canal were a couple of these tripod structures, each supporting an urn-shaped woven basket. The docent told us they were nesting baskets for use by ducks. I guess having a handy population of semitame ducks was also of benefit to the millers.

Back on the barge, as we pulled away, I got this shot of the canal-side dish-washing station, though from the back, so you still can't see the shelves.

Back on board the ship, we were greeted with trays of these elaborate little pastries—I think that's supposed to be a duck on top. Anyway, they were cream filled, tasty, and pretty darn redundant, as it was almost time for lunch, which was to be followed by Dutch teatime.

Other things we learned this morning:

• The Netherlands used to have 10,000 windmills, but they're now down to about 1100 or 1200. Near Amsterdam, there's an open-air park where they've moved some windmills from other areas.
• A windmill like those at Kinderdijk can pump about 50,000 liters per minute, but the Archimedes's screws can do 1.5 million per minute.
• There are a few grist mills in surrounding villages, but Kinderdijk was always all pumping mills.
• I asked about a big pile of what looked like thatch that was stacked on the banks of the canal. Turns out it's just cut reeds, left over from from cleaning the canals. They'll just shred and mulch it, or feed it to animals, but it won't be used for thatch.
• The mill we toured is called a "hollow post" mill. It's also called something that sounded like "glockegevibs"; the others are called "round sailors."
• The canal the barge took us along is about 6 feet deep; our guide used to skate on it as a child, but it hasn't frozen hard enough in years.
• The occupants of the mills get mail delivered like other householders. You can get reasonably close the the brick ones in a car, if need but, but not so mich the wooden ones across the canal.
• The position in which the sails of a windmill are stopped signal its status:
  top wing vertical, short pause wings diagonal like an x, longer pause or out of commission wing stopped right before the door, good news (e.g. birth of a child) wing stopped just after the door, sadness position (e.g., death in the family)
• But during WWII, the millers worked out a code and used the positions of their sails like semaphore, to signal the allies about German troop movements.
• In 1924, Kinderdijk was the first city in the Netherlands to get electricity, and and in 1950 was the big change over, when the electric pumps took over.
• The farmers hate geese. Seven geese can eat as much as a cow, and cows don't like areas fouled by geese.

During our visit, I spotted mallards, cormorants, greylag geese, Canada geese, three kinds of gulls, and eared grebes. Here are the two best shots I got of the grebes. Dutch for grebe is "fuut."

By the time we got back to the ship, the Lofn had sailed away and been replaced by the Avalon Imagery.

Just as we cast off from Kinderdijk, we were overtaken by the Viking Einar, on which we will be passengers next week. Then lunch was served. The fine-print appetizers included this particularly handsome and tasty little open-faced shrimp sandwich with sprouts and parsley.

At the right, David enjoys a particularly tasty first-course soup and iced tea.

Here's a better view of the soup itself, a purée of carrot and orange, with pomegranate arils. Excellent combination!

David's main course was Italian meat-filled cannelloni.

I chose the pulled pork BBQ sandwich, and being southern, I opened it and put the coleslaw in. The fries were pretty good—the Dutch fry a good potato—and no one is even surprised when you ask for mayo to put on them.

David's dessert was "French custard pie," but he said it didn't taste very French.

I opted for the peach melba sundae.

At the left is an industrial plant of some sort that we cruised by. A sand quarry maybe, or a cement plant. I just include the photo to give you a little break between meals, since it was food all the way after that, for the rest of the day. We also sailed past large flat-roofed industrial buildings that were flying hawk-shaped kites from masts on their roofs, I guess to keep birds off.

The afternoon's event, as we cruised toward Nijmegen, was billed as Dutch afternoon tea and waffle-making demonstration. Accordingly, the chef's minions had set up a table in front of the bar bearing two large rectangular waffle irons.

Next to them they arrayed a variety of toppings: stewed cherries, chocolate sauce, brown sugar, black-and-white chocolate sticks, and what looked like grapenuts, in addition to a big stainless whipped-cream spritzer.

The chef appeared, proudly bearing his bowl of waffle batter, but when they plugged in the second waffle iron, the breaker popped, and that was that. The batter went back to the kitchen, and servers brought out tiny plates bearing wedges of the premade waffles from the kitchen, cold and soggy, and each topped with whipped cream and a cherry. Granted, it was their first cruise of the season, but you'd think they'd have tried a dry run . . .

But the tea wasn't bad. Rather than the fancy glass infusers we got last fall, we were issued tea bags of our chosen flavors (mint for me, this late in the day), and the servers filled our cups from thermos carafes. The various foodstuffs (the same as those served at every other Viking "regional" tea) were passed on trays rather than arrayed on the fancy three-tiered servers from last fall.

At the right is my plate with a cucumber sandwich, a smoked-salmon sandwich, and a pink macaron.

At the left, a wedge of Viking's excellent brown-sugar shortbread with chocolate chunks in it.

Written 29 April 2023

Last, they came around with the scones, which are always the same and always not quite scone-like, but they're good with the thick cream and strawberry jam supplied with them.

Next up, of course, was dinner. I started with excellent gravlax (dill-marinated raw salmon), served with great potato salad and more of those little circles of pumpernickel that I didn't much like.

As we dined, I spotted some very large black-and-white ducks on the banks. I looked them up later and learned that they are common eiders (where the eiderdown comes from). I saw more and more of them as the cruise progressed.

We also chose the same dessert: an excellent tart Tatin (caramelized upside down apple tart) with vanilla ice cream.

Something David said made me wonder, so I went up to the Aquavit Lounge to check, and sure enough, there are no rocking chairs there. My sister-in-law Jan Fox would be sad hear it. The rocking chairs on the Vidar last fall were her favorite place.