Thursday, 6 April, Hoorn: tulips and windmills
Written 7 June 2023
The ship stayed in Amsterdam until the wee hours for the convenience of those wishing to spend the evening in the city, then cast off at 4:30 am, heading to Hoorn, arriving about 9 am. The only excursions offered in the morning were the "walking tour and local performance," which we had just done on 28 March 2023, and the "Dutch countryside and home visit by e-bike," which we had no interest in, so we had sort of envisioned a quiet morning aboard, followed by the afternoon "Tulips and Windmills" excursion. But (a) Rachel hadn't seen Hoorn yet and we looked forward to seeing her reactions (it's a gorgeous little town), (b) we had a fair chance of seeing the shanty choir again if we repeated the walk, and most compelling, (c) because of cruise logistics, anyone wanting to do Tulips and Windmills at 2 pm had to get off the boat at 9 am, have lunch out, and rejoin the ship by bus at suppertime, at a different port. So we packed up and repeated the tour, which turned out to be quite different from the first one. It was also cold as all get-out.
We were moored at the same spot as last time, on what today's guide told us is "East Island," created to provide space for warehouses. We were once again facing the bank of daffodils and the very wide building above it. Today's guide started by introducing herself as "Els," which is a nickname for Elizabeth, then revealed that the reason daffodils are so rampant around here, especially outside actively cultivated gardens, is that voles and mice don't like daffodil bulbs, but they eagerly devour any tulip bulb left unguarded; her cat's job is to protect the tulips in her garden.
She also said that "Hoorn" means "bend" or "corner," and that's it's located in a bend of the coastline (and has been since well before the Zuiderzee came and went."
According to Els, before it was a prison, the long building was the workhouse. After the prison closed, it stood empty for a while, and developers proposed building skyscrapers on the site that could be seen from Amsterdam (40 km away!). The locals would have nothing to do with that scheme, and the fire department pointed out that such buildings would be deathtraps because their ladders wouldn't reach that high and because access to the island is so restricted for large vehicles. So now the prison complex houses a museum of the 20th century, a hotel, apartments, and on the right-hand end, the cinema museum.
The prison was long known as "the currant farm," because "currant" (Dutch, "krent") was the term for a shriveled, undeveloped bean, the kind that had to be sorted out from among the good beans and discarded. So now, the old guards' residence, between the cinema museum and the wharf (in the left-hand photo) is called "The Currant Farm" and has been turned into a sort of coffee klatch for the town's retired people.
Here's the sign over its door, featuring a guy in a striped shirt behind bars and the label "De Krent." The number on the guy's shirt is "2011," presumably the date it was converted to its present use.
At the left here is the flat inland face of the imposing gray guard tower I showed photos of earlier. The door in the center is that of the restaurant that now occupies it. At the right is a unicorn gablestone on the lake side of it (not the same unicorn gablestone I showed a photo of last week; it has more than one).
The tower was built, as part of a defensive wall, in 1532. In 1651 they added tower, and in 1750 they rebuilt the top after lightning struck the steeple. All three dates appear on the façade.
The first big houses built in this part of town were for prosperous whalers. According to Els, their business dwindled during Napoleon's time, but she didn't say why.
Today, the population is about 75,000. Many residents commute to Amsterdam (ca. 30–40 min by train or car). The town would like to have more employment here, but not if it means increasing local pollution
A few steps inland from the harbor is Captain Bontekoe's house—too bad about the van parked in front. Remember Captain Bontekoe, of the ill-fated voyage to the East Indies and the three fictional cabin boys who featured in the novelization of it?
At the right are the gablestone and ship weathervane at the top. It seems "bontekoe" means "spotted cow."
Only a short distance away was a church with a ship weathervane—the fishermen's church.
As we strolled, Els passed out "drop" candies, little hard disks of double-salted licorice, claiming they are the single most requested item that Dutch people abroad want their friends and family to send them. I loved them; they reminded me of soft chewy candies we used to get when I was a child, which my family always called "licorice buttons," but which on the box were labeled Pomfret (or Pontefract) Cakes.
She also recounted the story of the Zuiderzee. It was formed within historical time, in the 1700's, in a year when a bad series of storms that broke through and joined a large inland lake to the sea. Then, after a major storm in 1916 flooded 3 million inhabitants and a 1 million Belgian refugees, the country undertood to spend 120 million guilders, a huge amount in 1916, to remedy this flooding problem. They built dike right across the mouth of the huge inlet, 90 m wide at the bottom and 36 m high. They used 5000 stones weighing 6000 kg each. They piled loose stones haphazardly on the seaward side, so that incoming waves are broken up and lose their force; even if they go over the top of the dike, they therefore don't do any damage. The dike was begun in 1916 and finished in 1932, when they began the process of turning the Zuiderzee into a freshwater lake, which it is today. In 1953, a major storm came through, and the dike paid for itself just in damaged prevented during that one storm!
As a result, Hoorn, once a busy fishing port, now has only two commercial fishing boats left, and prices of diesel have increased so much since the Russian invasion of Ukraine that it's longer profitable for them to operate.
Another thing she pointed out is that when two waterways intersect, if the brick walls bordering them curve around the corners, then at least one of them is a natural river. Dug canals meet at square corners.
Els pointed out the "J&T Mos" restaurant as being an old cheese warehouse, specifically for the small Edam cheeses. It's amazing how many historic buildings in the Netherlands, I describe and then end with, "now a restaurant." Unless it's "now apartments."
As we continued our stroll, Els explained that the street we were walking along was the top of a dike—you could tell because all the side streets sloped down away from it on both sides. In the days of floods, houses on the inland sides of the dike were more expensive because they were protected from flooding; now it's the other side, because they can have south-facing gardens.
This gablestone featuring a golf club, a golf ball, and part of a tree isn't dated. Els pointed out that despite the suggestion of an outdoor setting, the club portrayed is the type used for an indoor version of golf played with a thick rubber disk rather than a ball.
She also told us that, in no. 31 on this street, the floors were sloped, so the builders (or perhaps remodelers) added little steps to them. You always walked level but had to step up or down every few feet. The hallway remained sloped. It was easy to clean, because you could just pour the water down it.
Written 8 June 2023
This house with two male carytids (i.e., atlases) is the most expensive house in Hoorn. The Menonite Church currently occupies it.
The building at the right, which faces on the town's main square and is adorned with a unicorn in high relief on the side is the old "weighing house," where cargo was weighed and appraised for sale or taxation. It is, inevitably, now a restaurant. Hence the table and chairs surrounding it and the icicle lights trimming its porch.
Els added something else about the Philadelphia Society, which has an establishment in Hoorn that houses handicapped people and gives them vocational training. It might have had to do with the restaurant in the weighing house, but I didn't follow the story.
Here's a better photo of the Grote Kerk (Great Church) than I got last time. It apparently started out as a little bitty church with a thatched roof but grew into an establishment larger than it is today, then was cut back. It started out Catholic, then was protestant, then back to Catholic, and is (are you ready?) now a restaurant. Actually, it's mostly apartments and a hotel—the skylights all over its roof serve as windows for the "interior" rooms—but it has a restaurant in it, too.
Then, in a small hall nearby, we settled in for our local performance. We weren't lucky enough to get the shanty choir again. Instead we got a troupe of eight senior citizens, plus two accordions and a fiddle, who dress up as their great grandparents and keep their dance traditions alive. Fun!
The dancers are dressed as prosperous farmers and their wives. The purses hanging from the women's belts are each embroidered with up to 28,000 beads, and several of the women wore coral necklaces—inherited from their great grandparents, as trade in coral jewelry is now illegal.
The musicians are dressed as peasants, not so prosperpous. The men wear flat hats and the women characteristic bonnets.
Between numbers, first the women, then the men, came forward to point out the authentic details of their dress. The women wore layer upon layer of stockings, bloomers, petticoats, skirts, and decorative aprons, in addition to the purses, hung from their waistbands with silver hooks, and elaborate lace headcoverings and caps with ruffles at the back of the neck.
Some of the men had silver buckles on their shoes, and all wore tall hats and carried watches on gold chains. I think the narrator said the men carried small purses called "the old sock" that were kept out of sight sight behind their jackets. They also demonstrated that the jacket's pockets were interconnected, so that a handkerchief could be tucked into one pocket, then pulled out another.
After the performance, they came down the steps to mingle with us while we had our punch and cookies and to answer any questions we had. Rachel was particularly taken with the silver waist-band hooks that held the purses. They were made of old silver spoons, bend into an S-hook shape, and in some cases (like the one in the photo), punched into filigree patterns.
On our way back to the to the parking lot where we would meet the buses, we passed some especially interesting plants. For example, the little olive tree at the left apparently did not get the memo that olives don't fruit in this climate—it was covered with olives in various stages of ripeness.
Another, which I had never see before, was this gorgeous red flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum). According to Wikipedia, it's native to the North American Pacific Northwest and produces currants that are edible but "with an insipid taste." Birds apparently like them, though, and the flowers attract hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. (Of course hummingbirds don't occur in Europe, so the Dutch have to settle for the bees, butterflies, and birds.)
Two more buildings that Els pointed out were the old hospital at the left (again, sorry about the parked vehicles). All its windows are rectangular now, but you can see from the doorway and the traces of old arches over the lower windows that the lower part of the building was built in Romanesque style and the upper part in Renaissance.
The house at the right has intrigued Els for years, but she's never actually knocked on the door to ask. It's a duplex, so inside, it's divided in two, and the outer features like the doors and windows reflect that structure, but what about that middle window on the seond floor? Who does it belong to? Is it only a fake, added to decorate the fa—cade? A puzzlement.
Other interesting things we learned on the walk:
On our way to lunch, as the buses rounded the deer park where last time I saw so many kinds of waterfowl, this time, in addition, I spotted a flock of turkeys and some of the actual deer!
Lunch was at the same venue as on 28 March, the Van der Valk hotel, with its "Jack's Casino" and it's Pirates of the Caribbean/Toucan themed buffet restaurant. Because it was a different day of the week, the offerings were a little different—no indonesian saté or spring rolls this time. Instead, there were more varieties of bitterbollen and frikadiller.
One interesting addition was this big rack of honey in the comb, pulled right out of the hive. On my first plate, that's a spoonful of honeycomb in the little dish round white dish—great with the cheese and on bread and butter.
The soups and desserts were also different. I don't remember what the golden soup was (probably mixed vegetable purée).
For dessert I just had a little square of spice cake and a chocolate Easter egg. Easter eggs of all sizes were everywhere among the items on the buffet.
As we rode around the Netherlands on the Viking buses, I spotted several other members of the Van der Valk chain, so you can probably get the same or a similar buffet in most cities in the country.
On this day, our next stop was a tulip farm (I think Rachel may have done a cheese tour instead). On the way, we passed horses and dairy cattle (but very few, because most are probably still in the barn). Our guide said that around here they grow onions and potatoes, which, like tulips, prefer a pinch of salt in the soil. And in greenhouses, tomatoes and peppers. Some greenhouses cover 10 ha (enough to fit 18 American football fields). In october, one farm will 1,000 kg of bell peppers; each plant will produce between 80 and 100 peppers.
The polder we're in was one of the ones flooded during WWII when the Germans deliberately breached a dike; in 8 hours, it flooded completely, drowning a lot of people and livestock. It took three years to get it dry enough again to farm it.
We also passed huge metal ware-house-type buildings. Apparently, land here is relatively cheap, and water for cooling is everywhere, so both Google and Microsoft have installed massive server farms. Imagine that—we drove through part of the cloud!
Here's part of a giant greenhouse full of tulips about to come into bloom. We passed through it on our way to tea. Each farm we visit feels obliged to provide tea.
We sat at tables in a large room that served as both the gift shop and the lecture hall. Each table was set with napkins, cups, milk and sugar, a vase of tulips, a little table-top waste basket, and a plate of the most elaborate pastries we've seen yet. They were basically thick cookies topped with a lot of sugary icing. Staff came around with big china teapots to pour for anyone who held out a cup; we got two rounds of tea but only one cookie per person.
Here's an aerial shot of the farm, one of the slides introductory lecture we listened to over our tea. The large array at the lower right is solar panels. They supply all their own power needs, then sell the remaining 50% of the output back to the grid. The green arrow at the top right points to the brand new housing for temporary workers that they built just before the pandemic.
This farm differs from the others we've visited so far in that they combine the bulb-growing operation and the cut-flower operation into one establishment. The bulbs are grown in outdoor fields as they were at Mr. Tulip, where they are rotated with potatoes, beets, grass, greens, and fallow years. Each field only grows tulips once every 7 years. For rotation purposes, they trade fields with neighbors, but they can't trade fields with onion, leek, or garlic farmers, because those veggies are all in the same family as tulips, so they share the same pests.
The bins in the right-hand photo are full of just-harvested tulips on their way to the packing room to be processed as cut flowers.
Here in the packing room, the tulips are spread by hand on a broad conveyer belt that takes them to a machine in the far background that removes the bulb. Rather than just cutting the bulb off, the machine crushes it so as to preserve the last centimeter of stem length that's actually covered by the bulb. That extra centimeter can add as much as a penny to the value of each bud.
From the crusher, each but is picked up by the stem end and run through an x-ray machine that checks for defects and then precisely aligns all the stems such that, once they're run through the trimmer, they are all exactly the same length. You can see the line of buds, dangling heads down, passing behind the guide, as she points out the bundles of five buds into which they are then grouped.
At the left side of the photo, you can see the conveyer belt bringing the crushed bulbs back to be dumped into bins for composting. At the right-hand side, you can see the little robot arms, each topped by a spool of elastic string, that grab each bundle and knot them together.
The right-hand photo shows three big bins of intact bulbs. These are particularly expensive and/or difficult varieties, for which they don't crush the bulbs. They're actually worth the three years or nurturing to bring them back to full strength to bloom again.
Here at the left is a closer view of the tying machine, applying those little elastic strings tied with a one-loop bow that you find around the flowers you buy at Publix (except that those probably come from Colombia rather than the Netherlands).
As we watched, I glanced into one of the bins of buds waiting to be processed and spotted this bud, streaked with yellow and therefore different from all the rest. It could be a genetic sport or it could be infected with a virus. Our guide had told us that uniformity of product is very important and that, during the bulb-growing operation, human inspectors walk the rows before the flowers are cut off to spot and remove all such variants. They can't pull them up, because they are planted between layers of netting as at Mr. Tulip, so they instead annoint each such bud with one drop of a poison they carry for the purpose. It kills the whole plant and causes the bulb to shrink and shrivel so that it falls through the netting and is lost when the bulbs are harvested. So when I asked the guide about this bloom, she said, "That should have been poisoned in the field, but the workers on the conveyer belt will spot it and throw it out."
Here are bunches of tulips, in cellophane sleeves, tucked into transport bins. These will be bundled into larger groups, wrapped in paper, and trucked away to the auction houses tonight, to be auctioned tomorrow morning. Some will be auctioned tonight and be exported tomorrow morning. They'll last a week to 10 days after that.
In the right-hand photo, the guide holds out one paper-wrapped bundle to show us how thick the cut stems are. This company grows their cut tulips in soil, whereas those grown hydroponically, like those produced by Mr. Tulip's clients, have thinner, spindly stems. The hydroponic ones are those that go to supermarkets. The thicker, soil-grown ones go to florists. For Valentine's Day, she said, the florists all want red tulips. For Queen's Day and Easter, they want orange and yellow.
At the left here is a section of greenhouse bed after harvest. The tulips are pulled up by hand and placed in those big bins to go to the packing room. Buds that aren't far enough along, or don't match the others, or have other problems are left behind, and that's what you see trailing forlornly here. We saw one such bed that must have been harvested days earlier, because all the tulips had had time not just to bloom but to bend upward toward the vertical again.
The guide pulled up one of the rejects and hand-crushed the bulb so as to show us the extra length of stem concealed inside.
In response to questions, she told us that they have about 7 million tulips in the greenhouses, and they ship about a thousand tulips every day. At this time of year, 20 people work here, but at bulb-harvest time, that increases to 35 workers. The extras are mostly Polish and Ukranian.
The land we're on was first dried in the 1830's, and the family that settled here raised 14 children. The current patriarch is Gerard, age 71, and his son, the current farmer took over in 2003.
The farm is 5.5 m below sea level, so when it last flooded, only the top of the roof was above water.
They plant out the seed bulbs in the field in October. When they come up to bloom in the spring, after they are patrolled for variants and the blooms are cut off, workers lie down on the back of the tractor and "glean" them; that is, the cut off by hand any blooms that the automated cutter missed.
After harvesting the large bulbs, they treat them as I described on 28 March. They grow the large bulb for cut tulips, and they cover the small ones with sand and store them in the cold until October to serve as the next year's seed bulb.
Each greenhouse bay houses 2500 tulips, and a computer controls light, humidity, and temperature for the whole greenhouse complex.
Written 13 June 2023
Back in the large room where we were served tea, we had a chance to explore the gift shop. I liked this little suspended vase, but not enough to buy it.
On the other hand, this print of a watercolor by Sietse Wiersma (entitled simply "Bloemen," flowers), spoke to both of us, so we bought a copy, which now awaits framing and hanging in our dining room.
So that was the "tulips" component of our afternoon tour. Our next stop was the "windmills" component. It's basically a family potato farm—the family appears at the left here. At the right are the dad (Jacob, unlabeled in the first photo) and grandpa Huib. Jacob took over management of the farm in
Like everyone else, they rotate among several crops—growing potatoes, sugar beets, grain, and onions—about 60%, 20%, and 20%. These, we were told, are the crops their soil is best suited for. They own 60 acres but lease additional crop land from the government. Their potatoes all go to the "fry factory" and the beets to the sugar refinery, from whjich it goes into candy-making and other industrial uses.
Also in the photo at the right, up on the screen, is middle kid Melle. He's the eager entrepreneur of the family—the one who suggested they open a gift shop and now runs it. Mom (who acted as our guide) is a city girl with a marketing degree, so they have a number of income streams, including hosting Viking tours and renting out the meeting room where they talked to us.
But the reason for our visit was that they are also wind farmers. In 1993 they bought themselves a small (50 m tall) wind turbine (one of those tall modern windmills, always called turbines around here to avoid confusion), which sits in their back yard humming (very quietly) to itself day and night, generating electricity and profit. They use about 3% of its output for their own purposes and sell the rest back to the grid (all profit once you pay off the initial investment, which they have, long since). They also have about 100 solar panels, but they point out that it would take four acres of solar panels to put out the 0.8 megawatts their one turbine produces. That's enough to power about 515 households. She said "we" (though I don't know whether she meant the family or the whole country) relied heavily on Russian gas, so the advantage of producing your own electricity has increased greatly.
At the right is a cutaway drawing of the "gondola" at the top, behind the blades. Besides the generating equipment, it contains apparatus that measures wind speed and direction and automatically rotates the blades into the wind and feathers them as necessary to keep them rotating at the optimal speed (which is much lower than I would have guessed).
From their farm, we could see many, many other wind turbines. Some of the nearer ones belong to neighboring farms. Those farther away, some of them up to 150 m high, belong to power companies. Underground conduits gather the power from them all and route it into the grid.
At the left here is an aerial shot of the central part of the farm. I had no idea until the very end of the lecture, that that amazing wetland maze was there, behind the buildings. I don't know what it's for! Wildlife preserve, I hope. But you can see how close the turbine is to the house and barns. The law says that, in general, turbines must be kept 600 m from houses, but because they own it and it's on own their land, they were allowed to put it where it is, just 40 m from the house.
Turbines have a reputation for being noisy—a pointed cited by people who don't want to live near them—but I could not hear this one over the sound of the bus idling in the nearby parking lot (in the angle between the two barns covered with solar panels). Two related concerns I heard were that the sound might not be noticeable near the turbine but might develop farther away (the way the base from the radio in the car next to you can sound louder in your car than it does in that vehicle), but I noticed no sound from the many surrounding turbines either. The other concern is that they produce very low-frequency sound, below the range of hearing, that could have deleterious effects. I can't address that one, but this family has been living in the shadow of their turbine for decades and seem happy and healthy. The guide remarked that living with turbines is nowhere near as noisy as living in the city.
She told us that the blades basically last forever but that the insurance companies won't insure tham after 20 years, so they've had to replace theirs once so far. Solutions for recycling the used blades are in the works. She also admitted to being a little embarrassed that she doesn't have an electric vehicle, her husband thinks she should, just for the image.
Finally, we got to go inside the turbine! At the right here is the first group to go in. There's not much room inside, so we had to enter in shifts; most people (including David) didn't want to wait in the drizzle for the chance, but I got to go in with the second group. Note how high off the ground the door is, almost a whole story up, and note also the "sea level" line painted on the side, about halfway up the height of the doorway.
Inside there wasn't much to see—a small round room, painted white, metal cabinets enclosing all the switches and wiring and a metal ceiling about 9 feet up, with conduit disappearing through it. We weren't allowed to open the hatch and climb the metal ladder up into the higher portion of the shaft. And inside, it was noisy—it thrummed quite loudly, like standing next to a bus as it revs its engine.
I was impressed.
Then the buses took us back to the ship for dinner. At the left here is the painting at the top of the stairs on Einar. I don't actually see him in it, but it's a nice boat . . .
At the right is the "crispy Mediterranean tart" David started with—grilled Mediterranean vegetables on a crispy puff-pastry crust. He said it was pretty good.
I started with the split pea soup, which was quite good.
I think we both had the "crispy roast port," which was very good, with creamy savoy cabbage. The advertised "beer sauce" was replaced with bread dumplings.
And I think everyone finished up with carrot cake.
A couple of random points: I should add to my gripe list that on the phones in Viking staterooms, little arrows on a list at the top point to rows of buttons to push to contact, e.g., the program director, the front desk, or housekeeping. But the arrows never actually point to the right buttons. They point between buttons, every time, on every Viking ship we've ever been on, so that you can't tell which buttons they indicate. Because not all buttons are in use, you can't just, e.g., count down from the top. Annoying.
Our guide in Amsterdams says the canals there are 3 m deep—1 m of ooze, 1 m of bicycles, and 1 m of water to navigate on.
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