Windmills and clogs and stroopwaffel, oh my! We picked up a hire car for the next part of our trip, and didn’t have any work on until this afternoon, so decided to head out of town to see some of the countryside. I went to Volendam on my last trip to the Netherlands, and when mentioned this to the hire car guy, he recommended Zaanse Schans as a ‘better place to go to see the real Netherlands’. So we thought we would check it out and maybe head to Volendam after if time was going to allow.

Zaanse Schans is a neighborhood in the Dutch town of Zaandam, only anbout 20kms outside of Amsterdam. It is known for its historic windmills and distinctive green wooden houses which were relocated here to protect them, and to recreate the look of an 18th/19th-century village. There are also a variety of artisan workshops demonstrating local handicrafts such as cheese making (of course!), wooden clog carving, barrel making, traditional soap making and pewter casting among other things. Most of these workshops are in old saw mills, spice mills, and flour mills.

The whole are is set in amongst what feels like people’s backyards, which must be annoying given the little historic village area attracts around 2 million visitors every year.

Today, it was blowing a gale of about 45kpm, so a few of the windmills were going like the clappers and on or two others seemed to have been secured to stop them working in these conditions.

It certainly is a picturesque little town, but damn that wind brought the forecast temp of about 13C down a lot with the wind chill.

This moody day made for some lovely pics of the windmills.

Duckie here was mostly hiding his head from the wind, but I waited him out until he was preening a little for a photo.

We did pop into a couple of the shops – partly to get out of the wind. This was the soakmaking workshop. It smelled amazing. I was expecting to walk into a cloud of perfumed hell, but instead the shop smelled really kinda earthy and not overpoweringly saccharine at all.

We did however get tricked into thinking this was a soap shop… only to be surrounded by Miffys! You can’t escape the Miffy in the Netherlands it would seem.

These guys were using the windmill to lift an enormous log out of the canal. Very clever.

I know this pic makes it look like there is hardly anyone here, but the car park has bout 100 bus parks and it must have been about half full, so there were heaps of people walking about. We tried to go into the cheese making studio, but it was bedlam and even though it would have gotten us out of the wind, we both rushed through the cheese shop part of the studio, to avoid the sudden crush of people.

We had better luck at the clog museum/workshop. Very cool buildings they have repurposed for these art and work spaces.

On the outside of the clog shop was this very cute arrangement, which every man and their dog had to get a selfie in front of… and I mean that literally, there were plenty of people visiting the village with their dogs and I watched one woman struggle for five minutes trying to get her super fluffy corgi looking mutt to put its paws into the clogs so she could bob down and get a photo with the heart made of clogs in the background. I was tempted to help, but it was like watching a live TikTok video – ridiculous but weirdly compelling.

Inside, there was some historical panels talking about how practical and useful wooden clogs are/have been through Dutch history. I loved these wooden clogs with the high leather gaiters riveted to the, that makes so much sense in these low lying lands full of water.

It was also interesting to note that each different area had slight variation on the types and shapes of clogs being made in their region – even though they might only be 50AD apart or less.

There were very fancy wedding clogs… for her:

And for him…

And walls full of brightly coloured and varnished clogs that you could buy to stuff wooden tulips into and take home – no doubt, only to realise that, ‘This shit totally doesn’t suit your house in suburban Brisbane! What were you thinking?’ No, I didn’t buy any clogs.

The super fancy, over the top, Swarovski encrusted, diamantéd clog from hell…. Remember kids, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

The workshop area reminded me very much of the Clog Barn in Coffs Harbour, only much, much larger. Same fabulous smell of timber and wood shavings though. 🙂

No one was working while we were there, but I’m fairly certain they use the same techniques to make clogs the world over.

The larger portion of the building was taken up with racks and racks of clogs for sale… leather upper, timber sole clogs, decorative clogs, unadorned timber clogs, super painted and highly varnished fancy schmancy clogs. You name it – they had it and in sizes to suit everyone. Well, maybe not Yale, but nearly everyone.

After this, we decided to flee Zaanse Schans and head to Volendam. The wind and driving cold weren’t awesome for outdoor activities… but I don’t know what I was thinking because Volendam is a port, right by the seaside! So of course the wind was even harsher and colder! 🙂

First we decided to stop by the local tourist information, which is conveniently located by the Volendam Museum… had no idea what to expect but was strangely disappointed and really not at the same time. It was one of those places with mannequins that make you feel like you’re being watched the whole time you go through the exhibits in a manner that makes you more aware of their creepiness and less able to actually concentrate on the information the ‘curators’ are trying to impart.

The Gumball Sniffer: you can’t see it very well, but this shop keeper is scolding the young girl for sniffing a gumball machine; literally her nose is two centimetres from it.

We noticed a running motif through plenty of the paintings and this installation – the Dutch used to play a LOT of card games, most of which showed money on the table. So we can extrapolate that in the 17-19thC period, they were rabid gamblers, yeah? And this kid is being taught early how to be a proper gambling wastrel in his future.

I’m sure it was totes common for the local haberdasher to hand over fabric to local kids to make kits with. Mind you, given today’s windy conditions, I fully expect you could have made a wool kite back in the 18thC and the damn thing would fly in these conditions.

This one – I got nothing. It was an older guy with a weird hat mending a fishing net, and a young boy with what looks like a fishing pot, sitting beside a massive pot of eels and potatoes (yum!?) and they have matching side by side bunk type beds… nothing weird happening here at all.

And of course, the obligatory womens doing womens work, diorama.

The only thing I did find in this museum to be absurdly fascinating was the huge room covered in the decals from cigar bands, affectionately known as the Cigar Band House. It was bizarre, to say the least. The Cigar Band House is a collection of mosaics made entirely from cigar bands. The project began in 1947, when a local artists began collecting and assembling the centre decal portion of bands into large mosaic designs. Over the years, he collected more than 11 million bands, and created Volendam’s people in traditional dress, sailors and fish in the harbour, local heraldry, and oddly a Statue of Liberty.

This entire room including the ceilings, and some of the furniture is covered in cigar bands.

A map of Volendam…

Heraldic display of the bestest weirdest kind…

A local windmill, and the church (which you can visit nearby- and maybe we should have instead!).

Most absurd and truly strange hobby ever – and the whole thing reminded me of the 1066 Project (sadly no longer on display), that I ran into in bum-fuck nowhere New Zealand where some completely obsessed nutter had spent 33 years making a complete reproduction of the Bayeaux Tapestry in teeny tiny steel mosaics! It was bizarre… so much so, it could be a ‘sister museum’ to the Cigar Band House.

There’s naught so weird as folks!

Anyway, we when to the Volendam Port at the risk of being blown right off our feet and pottered around a bit. There were loads of restaurants and cafes that are probably delightful to sit out on the esplanade and have a beer and some Dutch frites – when it’s not blowing a gale that is! – and loads of very touristy shops selling the same souvenirs that were in the shops in Amsterdam, but at roughly half the price.

Even the civic art pieces looked like they’d had enough of the wind chill.

The sheer amount of poor food choices on could make here in an hours is astonishing. Stroopwafels, actual waffles, burgers, hotdogs, Dutch frites, beer, beer and more beer! There was of course a healthy option – the cheese factory a little down the road. 🙂

I imagine this pub is great fun on a summer’s afternoon overlooking the water.

And when they aren’t trying to feed you they’re trying to sell you more hats, tshirts, magnets, wooden tulips, pretend Delftware, clogs, keychains and Miffys, again!

Volendam Square – yes, the sensible peoples are all indoors today.

We had work to do this afternoon, so didn’t hang around too long and made our way back to Amsterdam. I took some happy snaps along the canals, and caught some of those quintessentially Dutch pics of the narrow houses and of course – bicycles everywhere.

The potted tulips really brighten up the city scapes – I imagine things could look quite bleak after months of a brutally cold winter.

National Opera House – bit of a Monet: looks great from a distance but up close the building needs a lot of work and a bit of facelift.

The Hotel we nearly stayed at – glad we didn’t, it’s on a decidedly noisy intersection.

More narrow canal houses.

Plenty of work this afternoon and next thing we knew it was dinner o’clock and we were nowhere near finished, so we decided to order in some dinner… which is where I discovered that ‘Dutch cuisine’ is as match a contradiction in terms as I had always been told it was. Theres’s no such thing – it’s a bit like Australia in that regard, we’ve stolen all our cuisine from other country’s influences. We decided to try out some tandoori style dishes from the Dutch Dubbawalla, for no other reasons than that Amsterdam is known for it’s wide variety of good quality international restaurants, the Dutch have a long history with India, and well, who can resist a restaurant that has such a silly name.

Food arrived – and it was delicious. Silly name or no, 10/10 would try some curries next time. Back to work and then kersplat.