Category Archives: Travelling in Europe

Finding Windmills

Adventures, The Netherlands, Travelling in Europe

It was Saturday afternoon in Alblasserdam and I’d finally managed to stop being lost. I considered wandering straight back to the Waterbus but I’d come this far and there was a a roadsign indicating that the windmills were just a few kilometers further, so I decided to keep going. It was a longer walk than I’d expected but I was walking along a pretty riverbank, with little Dutch houses on the other side of the road, so it quite pleasant. Not sure I’d recommend it to people not used to walking, however. Also, important to watch out for crazy cyclists.

Windmills and tourists (800x451)

Eventually, I reached Kinderdijk. The two sweet and elderly volunteers manning the ticket office were horrified that I’d walked all that way and directed me to a much easier (and 2.5km shorter) pedestrian (and cyclist) path I should take on the way back back.It’s just off the main road, a road filled with houses and museums and restaurants. Kinderdijk, located technically below sea-level, is a network of mills, dykes, pumping stations and reservoirs. It’s a water management system first constructed in the Middle Ages and still in operation today, although the windmills ceased to be the main method of pumping water in the 1950s. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site in recognition of “the outstanding contribution

Windmills HDR 2 (451x800)

made by the people of the Netherlands to the technology of handling water.. admirably demonstrated by the installations in the Kinderdijk-Elshout area”. Also, windmills!

Next to the ticket office was a small curio shop and restaurant. It was the same kind of curio shop/restaurant you so often see at historical places in South Africa – at least in the smaller towns. It was quite quaint and by this stage I was more than ready for a cup of coffee. Outside the window, a couple sat sharing a beer.

Feeling better, I wandered off to look at the windmills. As in pretty much all of Amsterdam, watch out for the cyclists and stay off their path – they’re quite determined. The windmills were stunning. The ones I was walking between were beautiful. Tall, buildings, thatched down the sides with giant blades reaching almost to the ground and as far above. They stand spaced along the canal in the grass.

Windmill reflections (451x800)

I was fascinated to realise there were people living in the mills. It seems the mills have to kept in working condition – they’re even kept as the back-up to pump water if all other mechanisms fail – but they’re not in use most of the time, so families with young children sit and play outside their homes and wander along to visit their mill-dwelling neighbours. This afternoon, there was a man cleaning out his garage. Further along, another of the windmills was being re-thatched.

The sky was darkening and it was beginning to rain. Reluctantly, I walked across a bridge towards the pedestrian path. There were more windmills here. It was quieter here, with fewer tourists. Some of the people walking past were definitely locals. A last few magical windmills reflected in the water as the rain began to fall.

Duck, canal, windmill (451x800)

Before long, I was walking along the side of small canal, between houses, children playing in playgrounds and tall autumn trees. To the left, the view opened up and I was looking across green, green fields, cows grazing, windmills in the distance. On the water, ducks and swans and coots splashed and fished. So many people were walking their dogs. A little girl and a little boy rushed out towards the swings near their house and stopped just short of running into a swan. They’ll clearly met this kind of creature before and nervously eased their way past before rushing on. An old man, walking his dog spotted to chat to a man planting flowers. A woman with a wheelbarrow crossed a bridge to a cluster of allotments. It was a long walk and I was tired but it was pretty and peaceful.

At the other end the path, I recognized the church tower I’d seen earlier in the day and found my way back to the Waterbus station. I had about half an hour to spare, so I ducked back out into the drizzle and headed to a take away place I’d seen on earlier. The family running it was Korean. I found myself struggling to find a languages to greet them.

A rush back to the “bus” stop just as the boat arrived. As we headed back to Rotterdam, it began to rain in earnest. Fat drops splashing down around the boat and on the windows and the skylight. Past the buildings and sights and sounds, under the Erasmusbrug and we were back. I had been thinking of going out for dinner but it was warm and cozy at the backpackers. Out of the window, I watched a man in a suit, with his girlfriend on the back of his bicycle,  arrive at a posh reception at the fancy restaurant, complete with huge plate glass windows, across the street.

That night I was staying in the Art Room(dorm) at ROOM Rotterdam, a lovely room painted white, with splatters of colour splashed around the walls and crockery and cutlery stuck to the ceiling. Tired but so pleased I’d managed to see the windmills, I slipped off to sleep.

Lost in Alblasserdam

Adventures, The Netherlands, Travelling in Europe,

Every country has those typical things for which the country is known. The Netherlands has several. One of the things I was determined to see while I was there was windmills. A brief search of the internet and I found Kinderdijk outside of Rotterdam. Rotterdam appealed to me anyway – something different, something not Amsterdam, but also a large port city. I like port cities – they tend to be a little more real and gritty than tourist-oriented capitals. So I traveled down to Rotterdam on Friday afternoon and checked into a lovely backpackers hostel called ROOM Rotterdam.

Saturday was windmill day. The day took longer to get going than I had hoped. It was 10am by the time I came down to (free) breakfast at the hostel. This turned out to be a good thing because a cursory glance at the website of the waterbus I was planning to take seemed to suggest that the next boat left at 12 noon. I had a little time to charge my various electronic devices.

Just before noon, I headed for the waterbus station. The waterbus is a boat that acts like a bus – passengers get on and off at various stops, just like a bus. The only difference is that it travels on water.  It’s really a very pleasant way to travel if you’ve got enough navigable waterways – which the Netherlands is definitely not short of.

The waterbus website had indicated that a “Dagkaart” – a hop-on, hop-off day travel pass – could be purchased that would cover both the transport to and from the area and entry to Kinderdijk. The website failed to say where these day tickets could be purchased. I got to the waterbus stop but there was no ticket office. I assumed the staff on the boat would sell tickets as passengers got on. When the boat arrived, this didn’t seem to be the case. Eventually I asked and the waterbus staff member looked confused that I wouldn’t know and told me that someone would come around on the boat – as if it were perfectly natural. For someone used to transport systems that require you to pay before you get onto the vehicle, it seemed a little odd to me.

The waterbus headed off and we travelled down the river for several stops. The conductor/ticket collector/ticket sales person eventually came around. He informed me (and several other tourists seated nearby) that we wouldn’t be able to get out at Ridderkerk, the stop that the pamphlets and websites had indicated was usual place to stop for the Kinderdijk, because the small ferry that normally took passengers from the waterbus stop to the Kinderdijk didn’t run on weekends. Instead, we would need to get out at Alblasserdam and find our own way to Kinderdijk.

He asked if I had a bike with me – most people take their bikes (for free) on the waterbus. I said I didn’t and he told me I should get a bike because it would take me about 15 minutes cycling but 45 minutes to walk. When we landed at Alblasserdam, I headed out in the direction the conductor had indicated to hire a bike. Either I got the directions wrong or the waterbus conductor was less generous and interested than he seemed. Pretty soon I was quite a long way from the water with no bicycle rental shop in sight.

It was a pretty town so I didn’t mind wandering around a little. I walked along a main road past suburban homes. I thought I had seen a map on a square near where I had started out. I turned left at a bank to head back that way. I walked along the street for several blocks but did not find the square or the map. I turned left again and walked through a small shopping area. There were bicycle shops, all closed on a Saturday afternoon, but no bicycle rental places. There was a bakery and a restaurant and a hardware shop. There was even a van selling fish, an actual fishmonger’s van, doing a brisk trade. There didn’t seem to be a corner store, for some reason. I could have used a bottle of water. I realised I was now lost.

I followed the road past tiny, double story houses whose front windows looking directly onto the street. I was curious and interested in the little houses, with their wall decorations and their tiny gardens, but I kept finding myself accidentally looking right into people’s sitting rooms. I felt like an intruder. Suddenly I’d be looking at people drinking tea or having lunch or chatting with friends. I looked away. Yet, each window invites you to look with a flower arrangement or ornaments or potted plants or tea sets arranged just so to please the eye of the chance passer-by.

At a T-junction, I came upon a church tower and had to choose a direction. Church towers are great if you’re wandering in a strange town, just as long as you take note of what they look like. In this part of the world, there are quite a lot of them, so if you’re not paying attention two similar church towers can lead you somewhat astray. I took a picture of the tower, just to be safe, and turned left.

I rounded another corner. The houses seemed to go on forever in their little rows but across the road was a park. The park seemed like a good option, especially when I realised it was called Kinderdijk park. Sadly, it did not contain any actual windmills. It did, however, have goats and sheep and ducks and autumn trees and green, green grass around a tiny canal.

It also had rather a lot of cyclists sharing the same small path as the few pedestrians. By the time I had narrowly escaped being run over by a group of what must have been 10-year old boys, I was more than ready, now that the park had given way to suburban back gardens with vegetables and sheds, to take a road to the right. The road went up a hill. At the top of the hill, I found a main road and, across the road, the river I’d come in on that morning.

Without realising it, completely by accident (or perhaps instinct) I had un-lost myself. I guess the lesson is, well the lessons are, just keep walking and trust yourself. My meanderings had taken me right back to where I needed to be. I was glad I hadn’t panicked and gone back to Rotterdam on one of the buses I’d passed. I’d spent a good hour walking around the town but it was a great way to see an ordinary neighbourhood of ordinary people in the Netherlands.

The Familiarity of an Unfamiliar Language

Ideas, The Netherlands, Travelling in Europe,

I keep catching myself. I’ll be sitting at a table, idly watching the conversation move back and forth, or sitting quietly on a train, zoned out but hearing the words drift by. Suddenly, it occurs to me that the words I’m listening to, the conversation I’m following, isn’t in English.

Perhaps I am used to the extreme opposite when I travel. The complete strangeness of Hangeul (Korean) or Swahili/Shona/Bemba, distant relatives of languages I know a little, with just a few common words. It is disconcerting to find myself in a country where the foreign language is familiar. I don’t speak Dutch by any stretch. I didn’t realise how much I would understand.

It comes in handy. Yesterday, I got to Rotterdam and headed out to take the tram, as per instructions sent by the hostel. There was a schedule posted. The tram I was waiting for was supposed to arrive every 10 minutes. But the sign with the expected times of the trams didn’t show it (yes, there are signs indicating how long you’ll wait, just in case the timetables are ever so slightly off – I imagine there will shortly be a post which is an ode to the awesomeness of Dutch public transport).

After waiting a while, starting at the screen, it occurred to me that I was reading the text scrolling across the bottom. The text indicating that the tram I was anticipating taking was not running on this particular day from this stop. Mentally thanking every Afrikaans teacher I’ve ever had, I headed off to the metro instead, instead of waiting around for ages and ages in the cold.

Inside the metro station, I looked around and couldn’t see a ticket desk with a human. I needed a ticket and there were ticket machines. Except there weren’t, because even the name of the machines was in Dutch. I picked up a ticket and only as I was leaving realised there was an option on the first page to use English instead (when I picked this, out of curiosity, it turned out to be English only to the first page, FYI, for anyone who doesn’t read Afrikaans).

It happened again this morning: I was reading a bilingual brochure for an attraction I wanted to visit and accidentally found myself reading the Dutch instead of the English, which turned out to be more detailed and more accurate.

Usually, I travel with a guidebook. This trip was so last-minute, so unplanned that I didn’t pick one up. Instead, I’m relying on maps and brochures picked up from information desks and hostels. And overwhelmingly in Dutch. Understanding a little makes travel easier. If I can’t immediately understand things, I find I can figure them out. I’m more confident. I can’t speak the language (I don’t generally speak Afrikaans either – just read and understand) but I can generally understand most of it.

There is something else. It’s something I struggle to explain – it’s comfortingly familiar. Perhaps it is the music of the language that is similar to Afrikaans. The voices of teenagers laughing on the square. The quiet conversation of an elderly couple on a bus. Even the people, the “types” feel predictably familiar.

Beyond the familiarity of the Dutch itself, there is a vocabulary of place that is familiar here. More than familiar – it represents a world I learned as a child. It struck me yesterday as I sat on the train from Amsterdam to Rotterdam. Outside the window, along a canal, were houseboats. There was a story, a long time ago, about a mole and a rat and a toad. Was it The Wind in the Willows? In it, there is a river or a canal and a houseboat. The pictures looked like these houses. On a canal. Somewhere in my head, I have held, all these years, a picture of a houseboat and a canal that didn’t match any of the houseboats or bodies of water I would ever see. It existed for me nowhere but the books I read as a child. Yet here it was. I made a note to complement the classics with African books for all the children in my circles and wondered how many other things there are in my mythology of the world that have no substance beyond imagination (for me) because they have never existed in my physical reality.

Like woods. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep…” “If you go down to the woods today…” “They shut the road through the woods seventy years ago…” I could go on and on. There were woods in Narnia, possibly the central book series of my childhood. There were woods in all the Enid Blyton books. There were no woods in South Africa. I’ve seen montane forests with hundred-year-old yellowwoods. I’ve visited the tropical rain-forests of the Congo. I had never walked in the woods until today.

It shouldn’t be possible for language to be both fragile and robust. Over the years other concepts had become attached to those words for me – forests for “woods” and yachts for “houseboats”. But language bounces back. The actual thing fits so much better that it quickly replaces the substituted concept. And those things – the real world things to which words should be anchored – make it possible for reality to translate from the unfamiliarity of Dutch to the gentle, safe familiarity of Afrikaans and, eventually, English.