What I Did on Thanksgiving in the Absence of Any Pies

Thanksgiving in the Netherlands is something of a non-event.  They don't sell turkey (or at least I couldn't find any in the grocery store), they don't really do pies, and, obviously, their Indians didn't teach them how ti grow corn.  (That joke would be funnier if there were more non-Amer Indians living here but since presumably you are not au currant on the immigration statistics of the Netherlands, we'll just pretend it works.)  I had to go pick up some bread and some butter and I kept thinking that I had to go before Thursday before I would remember that nothing would be closed on Thursday, after all.

I did have a special Thanksgiving treat, though.  I had stampot (mashed carrots, potatoes, and sauerkraut) --I figured that if I couldn't have traditional American food, I'd go traditional Dutch.  I also splurged and bought canned peas.  They are super expensive here--a regular sized can costs about $1.50.  I thought about making pea salad but didn't because 1) Dutch mayonnaise is weird and quite sweet and 2) they don't really have cheddar cheese here or, rather, they have "cheddar" but it is super, super expensive and it isn't the pretty extra-orange color you need to make a real pea salad.

But, to make the day special (after I pretended to do a lot of home work), I wore my Christmas socks with Santas on them, listened to Christmas music, and did this:

(Please ignore the little typo, there.)

For the last week or so I have been making origami Christmas decorations (usually when I should have been doing school work, but that is beside the point).  So I put up all the rest of it together in an homage to the Christmas trees we had when I was little.   Plus, to top it all off, it only cost about $6 in crepe paper and origami paper.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

Weerdood

I just want to let you know ahead of time that I will probably die of pneumonia or something before I get home.

This will occur because of the peculiarly piercing quality of Dutch winter fog and because of the apparent Dutch inability to cope with it.  The last couple of days have been around freezing but what has made it particularly cold is the fog, which means that you spend all of your time walking through suspended clouds of little pellets of almost-ice.

What makes it so, so bad, though, is that Dutch folks have decided to keep all buildings--from shops, to classrooms, to public transport cars--at a ridiculously high temperature.  It isn't so bad during the off-hours, when it isn't too crowded, but during rush hour, crammed in with loads of Dutch folks in their giant, puffy winter jackets, some of whom smell rather strongly of cannabis, I start getting flash-backs to that one special Christmas shopping trip with Asa.  I can only imagine that the Dutch folk have decided to try to warm up the whole general vicinity by using every enclosed space to provide radiant heat.

The title of the post doesn't really mean anything but "weer" means "weather" and "dood" means "dead".  But the Dutch, like the Germans, have a propensity to smush words together that "seem to go together."  So I decided to make up a word that expresses the fact that I will die because of the drastic changes of temperature and I don't know what the Dutch words are for "excessively high indoor temperatures" or for "dramatic, repeated temperature fluctuation".

Schiedam Windmills

When I went to the Schiedam Open Monumentendag Celebration, I went to the Windmill Museum which is inside one of the windmills, the Museummolen De Nieuwe Palmboom.

In the lobby of the museum, they had a scale model of the windmill.  There are eight levels in the mill but you could only go up to five.


On the way up to the museum levels, there is a sign which might be a little disconcerting.















The museum is set up like a working mill, with the museum set up around the relevant areas of the windmill.









This, for instance, shows the kinds of jobs that are related to the grain industry.

Boer--Farmer
Molenaar--Milliner
Bakker--Baker
Brander--Distiller






There was also a list of the "Language of the Mills" which describes the ways in which the position of the mill sails at rest could convey messages.

The first  sign shows that the mill is taking a short break, such as for lunch.  It is easier to restart the mill from this position.

The second sign shows that the  mill is taking a longer break, as for over Sunday.  It is harder to restart the mill from this position but it is also less likely to attract lightning strikes than the short-break position.

the third sign shows celebration, as in births or marriage.  So this is how the Dutch would celebrate little Isaiah.

The fourth sign shows mourning.


This shows a model of Schiedam circa 1600.  Notice the number of windmills around the periphery of the city.  Schiedam is known for having the tallest old style windmills in the Netherlands.  They started off normal size but because there were so many of them they kept getting taller and taller.  Only five of these windmills are still extant but the Schiedam Windmill Association has bought the land where two others were located and are planning on reconstructing them when they have the funds.  If you look at the map below, the Metro stop is on the left side of the map, near that string of buildings that run away from the city along the canal and the Palmboom Mill is the second mill south of the road there (in this picture you are looking more or less south).




This is the way that they used to keep track of all the grains ground and of the taxes due on each job--those taxes were taken in percentages of the ground flour.

This is a model of a different kind of mill.

This is a much simpler kind of windmill made for the express purpose of watering the cattle.  Much better than carrying buckets of water places.

This is the scale model of the windmill that shows the working parts of the mill.  Notice the framework and the giant captain's wheel like thing that are used to adjust the orientation of the sails.

The windmill was turning when I was there.  These are the cogs that connect the actions of the sails to the the working bits of the windmill.

The picture above was taken without flash and you can see the spin-y-ness. The one on the right is taken with flash so you can see what the cogs look like.



This is the grinding section where there are three massive sets of mill stones to grind flour.

This is the section below the millstones.  The  ground
flour goes down those fabric tubes and is loaded . . .

 . . . into the these bags for purchase and transportation.

This is the scale where bags of flour were weighed.

The bags were then sent down through this trapdoor
instead of being carried down the little bitty stairs that
resembled ladders.

 You could go out onto the porch around the middle of the windmill.  It was pretty wide.  The bits where the sails were whipping around very loudly were cordoned off with string so that you couldn't walk into them by accident.  See all of the mills in the distance?  Imagine what it must have been like when the had four times this many mills going.  The canal here is the one that runs along the perimeter of the city.

This is the back door of the mill.  The sign on the fellow's mill stone says "Please use other door."

 I thought that this looked very Dutch.  This also shows the
size of a millstone, even if this is just half of one.  You
wouldn't want one of these tied around your neck.

This is used for unloading grain into the mill.  I am pretty sure that Grandpa had something that looked a lot like this on the farm somewhere.




The windmill was used primarily to grind grains for Jenever production.



This is one of the boats that was used for the transportation of Jenever related products around the city canals.  It carried the leftover mash from making the Jenever which was used as cattle feed.

The Museum Windmill.

The museum next door, which is being used as a
restaurant. 

This is the name plate on one of the other
windmills.

An advertisement for a radio station painted onto
a giant concrete flour bag shape next to a windmill.

One of the other windmills in town.  It is the only one which still has a live-in mill keeper.

This is the English language section of the sign that is outside the Windmill Museum.

Hortus Botanicus

Carolus Clusius

The third thing I visited in Leiden was the Hortus Botanicus, the Botanical Garden which is a part of the University of Leiden.  It was founded in 1590 (before Jamestown!) by Carolus Clusius.  It is the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands.









The gardens are quite extensive.  I went through the hot houses (on the right of the map below) but I didn't walk through all the rest of the garden because I was running low on time and because it was 2:30 by the time I got out and I still hadn't had any lunch.

This is a map of the garden grounds.

The massive garden green house.

The greenhouse from inside the gardens.

Palm trees in boxes along the outside of the green house.

                               

Rice

This sign for the "Tropical Forest" section includes the
assurance that the air system was constantly treated
for Legionnaire's Disease.

I think that this is a lime tree.  Notice the fruits at all
different stages of development. 

The only carnivorous plants which I actually saw were
these pitcher plants.
The sign on the left says "Warning!" or "Look Out!"
Carnivors.

People were throwing money onto the giant lily-pads.

The rose garden with a sundial.  The rosehips were massive.  They looked like small apples.  I didn't know they got that big.

They have an apiary in the summer.

Bridge over the canal that runs through the garden.

kl
 kl

Herb garden and part of the
University of Leiden.

Massive Aloe Veras.