Netherlands North Jan 14- 2019
After almost 4 months at home, I returned to Europe on January 14, 2019. I purchased a second VW California from MyCalifornia.eu, a company I can heartily recommend – a great price (over €11,000 cheaper) and superb service. They picked me up at the Amsterdam airport, we went to their office in Naarden, filled out all the paper work and I drove off on my adventure.
As it was the middle of winter, I was keen to get to southern Europe but decided to see the rest of the Netherlands I had missed (west and north), western Germany, Luxemburg, SE Belgium, and west-central France on my way to Spain and Portugal. The trip is described under the appropriate country.
AMSTERDAM
De Gooyer is located between Funenkade and Zeeburgerstraat on the side of a canal. It is the tallest wooden mill in the Netherlands at 26.6 meters high and is registered as a National Monument. The Gooyer consists of a stone foundation topped by a wooden octagonal body. The mill is owned by the municipality of Amsterdam and is not open to visitors. Although the blades are functional, they no longer operate any grinding mechanism.
Next to the mill, in the former municipal bathhouse dating back to 1911, is the Brouwerij ‘t IJ. The mill and the bathhouse building are unrelated, and the mill fulfills no function for the brewery despite the image of a mill being in the brewery logo.
Crane Hotel Faralda is a hotel located at the top of a monumental crane on the NDSM site, a former shipyard on the banks of the IJ in Amsterdam North.
The crane was built in the 1950s but by 1984, was no longer used. In July 2013, it was transported, restored, and moved to its present site. It has three luxury hotel suites at the top of the faucet. A jacuzzi is located in the top of the crane. There were several unique solutions that had to be devised. The tower of the crane containing the three suites continues to revolve around a pivot bearing. In this very small rotating shaft of a few centimetres diameter, all pipes, drag couplings and fire safety provisions run.
In the night to 27 May 2018 a 32-year-old man was killed after a fall from the top during a party.
ZAANDAM is the main city of the municipality of Zaanstad, and received city rights in 1811. It is located on the river Zaan, just north of Amsterdam. The district Zaandam has a population of around 76,804
Czar Peter House is where Czar Peter I of Russia resided in 1697 during his Grand Embassy. The building was constructed in 1632. Peter had met the Zaandam blacksmith and craftsman Gerrit Kist when Kist had worked for the czar in Moscow. Upon visiting the Zaanstreek, Peter insisted on staying with Kist in his home, despite Kist’s protests that his house was a mere hovel, shared with the widow of one of his workers. The widow was paid to move out, and Peter spent a week as Kist’s houseguest and returned several times, the last in 1717. The czar was traveling incognito under the name Peter Michaeloff and while Kist did not reveal his guest’s identity it did not take long for Peter to be recognized, making his observations difficult. Peter wanted to learn more about the Dutch shipbuilding industry, and with this knowledge (and other knowledge acquired during the Grand Embassy) began a period of modernization and growth in Russia. At this time, the Dutch Republic was one of the most developed countries in the world.
In 1895, a new stone cover was built over the house to protect it.
Windmill Museum. Zaanse Schans is best known for its collection of well-preserved historic windmills and houses. From 1961 to 1974 old buildings from all over the Zaanstreek were relocated using lowboy trailers to the area. The Zaans Museum, established in 1994 near the first Zaanse Schans windmill, is located south of the neighbourhood.
The Zaanse Schans houses seven museums — the Weavers House, the Cooperage, the Jisper House, the Zaan Time Museum, the Albert Heijn Museum Shop and the Bakery Museum.
HAARLEM (pop 160,000)
Haarlem is the capital of the province of North Holland and is a 15-minute train ride from Amsterdam, so many residents commute to the country’s capital for work.
Haarlem was granted city status in 1245. The city is located on the river Spaarne about 20 km west of Amsterdam and near the coastal dunes. Haarlem has been the historical centre of the tulip bulb-growing district for centuries.
History. Haarlem lies on a thin strip of land above sea level known as the strand was (beach ridge), that connects Leiden to Alkmaar. The people on this narrow strip of land struggled against the waters of the North Sea from the west and the waters of the IJ and the Haarlem Lake from the east. Haarlem became wealthy with toll revenues that it collected from ships and travelers moving on this busy North-South route. However, as shipping became increasingly important economically, the city of Amsterdam became the main Dutch city of North Holland during the Dutch Golden Age. Haarlem became a quiet bedroom community but still has many of its central medieval buildings intact. Nowadays many of them are on the Dutch Heritage register known as Rijksmonuments.
Haarlem railway station opened in 1839, on the Amsterdam–Rotterdam railway, the first railway line in the Netherlands. The current building was built between 1906 and 1908, the only train station in the Netherlands that is built in Art Nouveau style.
Frans Hals Museum was established in 1862. The City of Haarlem seized over 100 artworks from Catholic churches in the 1580s after the Protestant Reformation and Haarlem art was rescued from demolished local buildings from the 15th century onwards. In 1950, the museum was split into two locations (Hof (located on Groot Heiligland) and Hal (located on Grote Markt) with the main collection, including its famous 17th-century Frans Hals paintings in the former Oude Mannenhuis on the Groot Heiligland.
Frans Hals the Elder (1582 –1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, normally of portraits, who lived and worked in Haarlem. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and he helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art. Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group portraiture. €15
Teylers Museum is an art, natural history, and science museum established in 1778. Pieter Teyler was a wealthy cloth merchant and banker of Scottish descent, who bequeathed his fortune for the advancement of religion, art, and science. He was a Mennonite.
Teylers Museum holdings include fossils (some are the first-ever discovered of Archaeopteryx), minerals, scientific instruments, medals, coins, and paintings.(works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Guercino, and Claude Lorrain.
The museum’s entire archives survived intact including accounts for all acquisitions, extensions, salaries, and day-to-day purchases since 1778, the complete series of visitors’ books since 1789, and the minutes of all meetings of the museum board since 1778. It is a tentative UNESCO WHS. €15
St Bavo’s Cathedral. Originating in 653, it was built in 1370-1351. The church part was built by the Catholics from 1895 to 1930 to replace the Church of St. Joseph, itself a replacement for the Sint-Bavokerk that had been converted to Protestantism from Catholicism in 1578. The Cathedral of Saint Bavo now serves as the main cathedral for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam. Within the Cathedral, the former sacristy has been converted into a small museum (schatkamer) containing historical artifacts from Haarlem’s Catholic past.
It is an imposing interior with very high ceilings of wood, and painted columns, and the floor consists entirely of 1500 gravestones, the oldest dating to the 15th century. The organ has 5068 pipes, is almost 30m high, and was played by Mozart when he was 10 in 1766. €2.50
Molen de Adriaan is a windmill in the Netherlands that burnt down in 1932 and was rebuilt in 2002. The original windmill dates from 1779 and the mill has been a distinctive part of the skyline of Haarlem for centuries. The windmill is fully functional and is capable of grinding grain. However, it is not often in use – it works for tourists, mostly on Saturdays and holidays. Inside the windmill is a small museum, and the interior can be seen.
Wormeveer. HMS Elfin was a torpedo recovery vessel built for the Royal Navy in 1933 and renamed Nettle during the Second World War. Sold for scrapping, she was bought by the Amsterdam Dry-dock Company and was converted to a tanker cleaning vessel until 1985. The ship was renamed Elfin, restored and preserved in Wormerveer. In the NM ship museum series, I came to see the HMS Elfin. Google couldn’t find it, the locals couldn’t remember it and after driving about 5kms of the main canal in Wormeveer, I couldn’t find it.
Droggmakerij de Beemster (Beemster Polder). Beemster is a municipality in North Holland. It is the first polder in the Netherlands that was reclaimed from a lake, the water is extracted out of the lake by windmills. The Beemster Polder was dried during the period 1609 through 1612. It has preserved intact its well-ordered landscape of fields, roads, canals, dykes, and settlements, laid out in accordance with classical and Renaissance planning principles. A grid of canals parallels the grid of roads in the Beemster. The grids are offset: the larger feeder canals are offset by approximately one kilometre from the larger roads. The municipality of Beemster consists of the following cities, towns, villages, and/or districts: Middenbeemster, Noordbeemster, Westbeemster, Zuidoostbeemster.
Around 800 AD the area was covered in peat. During 1150-1250 peat-digging and storm floods enlarged a small river into an inland sea, a lake in open connection with the Zuiderzee. A ring dike a meter high was made and in 1612 the polder was dry and the country was divided among the investors. In the earlier days of the polder, farmers occupied its lands for growing the crops necessary for long sea journeys by the VOC to the East Indies. It turned out that the farmland was so good that the project was considered then to be an economic success. A co-op was formed in 1901 to create cheese made from milk that comes from the Beemster polder. Today Beemster Cheese is sold in Europe, as well as the U.S., Canada, Japan, and China.
Since 1999 the entire Beemster Polder has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list: a masterpiece of creative planning, it had a lasting impact on reclamation projects in Europe and beyond.
The Nomad Mania series “Small Towns” lists several north of Amsterdam. I saw most of them. All are in very low country and canals are everywhere. I have difficulty understanding their importance now – there is generally little to see other than the big church in every town.
De Rijp (pop 4,000) is a village and former island between the Schermer and the Beemster polders. Before the poldering of the lakes surrounding it, De Rijp was a port town with merchant ships that travelled the high seas. The town had a medium-sized herring fleet, and larger ships whaled. The polders meant that the Rijper ships needed to travel much further before they were on open water but the herring industry remained important.
After a fire that destroyed the south side of the town in 1654, the church had stained glass windows donated from towns all over Holland and they are considered national treasures. Today it is known for its characteristic rijksmonuments, which include some of the oldest wooden houses of North Holland.
Broek in Waterland (pop 2350) is a town, part of the municipality of Waterland, that is about 8 km south of Purmerend and 8 km northeast of Amsterdam. It was a popular vacation village for sea captains in the 1600s and in the 17th and 18th centuries, a popular residence for merchants and seafarers from Amsterdam. Many of the houses in the village date back to before 1850. The church was rebuilt after a fire in 1628 and is known for its pulpit, organ and original ceiling frescoes rediscovered under old layers of paint during a 1989 renovation. Today it is supposedly famous for its cleanliness and tidiness but all of the Netherlands is clean, neat, and tidy.
Marken (pop 1810) is a village in the municipality of Waterland that was an island in the Zuiderzee. In the early 20th century, the small fishing town and its inhabitants were regarded as a relic of the traditional native culture. The dike, built in 1941 in the north, is the first phase of that project which was stopped by the war. It is connected to the mainland of North Holland by a causeway. The characteristic wooden houses of Marken are a tourist attraction.
Monnickendam (pop 9,500) is a town in Waterland. The town was founded by monks in 1335 and the name Monnickendam translates as ‘Monk’s dam’. Although it is a small fishing village today, it was an important port in earlier centuries. The bell tower dates to 1591. The fourteenth-century church of St. Nicholas, renovated in 1602, is particularly notable.
Volendam (pop 22,000) is a town in the municipality of Edam-Volendam (pop 28,492). Originally, Volendam was the location of the harbour of the nearby Edam, but in 1357, the inhabitants of Edam dug a shorter canal to the Zuiderzee with its own separate harbour. This removed the need for the original harbour, which was then dammed and used for land reclamation and Vollendam literally meant ‘Filled dam’. In the early part of the 20th century, it became something of an artists’ retreat, with both Picasso and Renoir spending time there. The majority of the population belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, which is deeply connected to the village culture.
On the 2000-01 New Year’s night, a short but intense fire at a party in a café resulted in 14 people died and 200 people were seriously injured. Volendam is a popular tourist attraction in the Netherlands, well known for its old fishing boats and the traditional clothing still worn by some residents. The women’s costume of Volendam, with its high, pointed bonnet, is one of the most recognizable of the Dutch traditional costumes featured on tourist postcards and posters.
Edam (pop 7380) is famous as the original source of cheese with the same name.
HOORN (pop 73,00) is a municipality and a town on the Markermeer, 35 km N of Amsterdam, and acquired city rights in 1357. Of its area of 53.25 km2, 33 km2 consists of water, mainly the Markermeer. Cape Horn, the most southerly point of the Americas, was named after the town by Willem Schouten, who navigated the cape in 1616.
History. Founded in 716, it became a major harbour town. During Holland’s ‘Golden Age’ (or ‘Golden Century’), Hoorn was an important home base for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and a very prosperous centre of trade. The Hoorn fleet plied the seven seas and returned laden with precious commodities. Exotic spices such as pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and mace were sold at vast profits. With their skill in trade and seafaring, the sons of Hoorn established the town’s name far and wide. Jan Pieterszoon Coen (1587–1629) is famous for his violent raids in the Dutch Indies (now Indonesia), where he “founded” the city of Batavia in 1619 (now Jakarta). He has a big statue on the Rode Steen Square in the center of Hoorn. In the eighteenth century, it became little more than a sleepy fishing village on the Zuiderzee. It is now a centre in the network of towns and villages which make up the province of Noord-Holland. In 1932, the Afsluitdijk, or Great Enclosing Dyke, was completed, and Hoorn was no longer a seaport.
Hoorn has a very high number of surviving 17th and 18th-century houses, especially north of the harbour area, adding much to the character of the area.
Museum of the 20th Century. Opened in 1994, it gives a nostalgic look with a bakery, haberdashery, hairdresser, classroom, and rooms in the various decades of the 20th century. €10
Westfries Museum. In the main square of the old town, this museum celebrates Hoorn’s role in the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age when Hoorn became very wealthy. Housed in a 1632 house, it has 25 restored period rooms with paintings, glass and furniture. There is a VR in the Golden Age. The Half Moon (in which VOC captain Henry Hudson discovered New York in 1609) is berthed from April to December. €9.50
ENKHUIZEN is a municipality and a city 27 km east of Hoorn. It was also one of the harbour towns of the VOC, just like Hoorn and Amsterdam, from where overseas trade with the East Indies was conducted. It received city rights in 1355. In the mid-17th century, Enkhuizen was at the peak of its power and was one of the most important harbour cities in the Netherlands. However, due to a variety of reasons, notably the silting up of the harbours, Enkhuizen lost its position to Amsterdam.
Enkhuizen has one of the largest marinas in the Netherlands. Zuiderzeemuseum is located in Enkhuizen. Industrially, it is home to several seed production companies, Syngenta, and Monsanto, as well as a plastics factory. Tourism is a large part of the economy.
De Ven is a lighthouse in Oosterdijk, a village in the municipality of Enkhuizen. Built-in 1699-1700, it is one of the oldest lighthouses in the Netherlands. De Ven is the only one remaining of three lighthouses that indicated the route from the Wadenzee to Amsterdam; the other two were at Marken and Durgerdam. In 1819 it burned down and in 1834, the light was equipped with a Fresnel lens. Since 1966 the lighthouse is a Rijksmonument but is not open to the public.
Medemblik is a municipality and a town in West Frisia. It was a prosperous trading town, when in 1282, Floris V, Count of Holland, successfully invaded West Friesland. He built several fortresses to control the region, one of which was Kasteel Radboud in Medemblik and was awarded Medemblik city rights in 1289. Medemblik obtained town walls in 1572 so that the castle lost its role as a refuge for the citizens, it fell into decay, but in 1889 was restored to be used as a courthouse until 1934. Anticipating the German invasion, the Rijksmuseum in September 1939 chose the castle as the initial hiding place of Rembrandt’s Night Watch.
Medemblik is best known in Europe for its sailing events. Medemblik further has a picturesque small inner city with many houses from the 17th and 18th centuries, two big churches, an old orphanage, a town hall and, of course, castle Radboud, which is just at the border of the inner city.
DEN HELDER is a municipality and a city at the northernmost point of the North Holland peninsula. It is home to the country’s main naval base. From here the Royal TESO ferryboat service operates the transportation link between Den Helder and the nearby Dutch Wadden island of Texel to the north.
History. Due to its strategic location at the tip of the North Holland peninsula, multiple fortifications were built in the area and it played an important part in Dutch shipping. During the Dutch Golden Age, ships would be assembled near Den Helder and sail the world’s oceans from there.
During the 1820s, the North Holland Canal was dug from Amsterdam to Den Helder. The lighthouse Lange Jaap was built in 1877 and is the tallest cast-iron lighthouse in Europe, at 63.45 meters (208.2 ft). In the Second World War, most of the city was evacuated. Den Helder was the site of a naval base as early as the 18th century. In 1947, it officially became the Royal Netherlands Navy’s main centre of operations.
Den Helder is on the tip of a lowland peninsula jutting out into the North Sea Because of this, Den Helder’s climate is heavily moderated by the maritime environment. Also, Den Helder is the sunniest city in the Netherlands.
Marinemusum (Museum of the Dutch Navy). Near the Texel ferry terminal, the submarine Tonijn is the showpiece of the museum. It had 67 crew and is in its original state. Naval technology is shown in the separate Ordnance Repair Shop. The De Ruyter is a radar ship – its bridge sits on the ground outside the ordnance shop. Two other ships normally part of the museum but not visitable in January are:
HMS Schorpioen. An ironclad steamship, it is now a restaurant in season.
Lightship Texel. This red, two-masted ship has a large red lighthouse in the centre.
TEXEL ISLAND (POP 13,700) It is the largest and most populated island of the West Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea (the name Texel is Frisian but is typically pronounced Tessel in Dutch). It is situated north of Den Helder.
The island of Texel was originally made up of two islands, Texel proper to the south and Eierland to the northeast, that was connected by shoals. In the early 17th century, the islands were connected by a dyke to keep the North Sea from ravaging the coastal areas of Texel proper. In the mid-nineteenth century, a polder completed the northern half of the island. Today, Texel forms the largest natural barrier between the North Sea and the Wadden Sea.
The dune landscape along the western coast of the island is protected as Dunes of Texel National Park. Notable areas include De Slufter, where the tide comes in and meets the dunes, forming a marshy environment rich in both fauna and flora. Texel is known as a unique habitat for wildlife, particularly in winter, when birds of prey and geese take up residence. About one-third of Texel is a protected nature reserve. A wetland called Utopia has been designed for birds to nest in. The tourism industry forms a substantial part of the economy in Texel with 70% of activities related to tourism. Popular activities include cycling, walking, swimming, and horse riding. Eierland Lighthouse.
Transport to Texel is usually by ferry (Royal TESO), from Den Helder. The return cost for a vehicle and up to 9 passengers is €37 on Friday to Monday and €25 the rest of the week. Pedestrians are €2.50.
FRIESLAND
Harlingen is a municipality and a city in Friesland on the coast of the Wadden Sea with a long history of fishing and shipping. Harlingen received city rights in 1234. Rederij Doeksen operate ferries to the Wadden islands of Vlieland and Terschelling from Harlingen.
A NM “small town”, I drove all over the city. Residential neighbourhoods have very attractive brick paving – red with dark brown circles and grey borders.
FRANEKER (pop 13,000). One of the eleven historical cities of Friesland about 20 km west of Leeuwarden. Franeker was founded around 800 as a Carolingian stronghold and eventually became an administrative centre.
Royal Eise Eisinga Planetarium is the oldest working orrery in the world built from 1774 to 1781 by Eise Eisinga, a local wool carder to explain the conjunction of the planets and to help mitigate local fears of what would happen during the planets’ alignment.
An orrery is a planetarium, a working model of the solar system. The “face” of the model looks down from the ceiling of what used to be his living room, with most of the mechanical works in the space above the ceiling. It is driven by a pendulum clock, which has 9 weights or ponds. The planets move around the model in real-time, automatically. (A slight “re-setting” must be done by hand every four years to compensate for the February 29th of a leap year.) The planetarium includes a display for the current time and date. The plank that has the year numbers written on it has to be replaced every 22 years.
To create the gears for the model, 10,000 handmade nails were used. In addition to the basic orrery, there are displays of the phases of the moon and other astronomical phenomena. The orrery was constructed to a scale of 1:1,000,000,000,000 (1 millimetre: 1 million kilometres).
Stadhuis Franeken. The Franeken city hall looks like a wedding cake.
LEEUWARDEN
Fries Museum. In a nice new building in the city centre, this is the typical county museum displaying the local history from the Stone Age on.
St. Boniface Church. The Gothic Revival church was built between 1882 and 1884. In the Church dedicated to Saint Boniface is a pipe organ built by the French organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. The church is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Groningen-Leeuwarden.
GRONINGEN
Groninger Museum. The local museum.
Martinikerk (St Martin’s Church) is the oldest church in Groningen. The origins of the Martinikerk are a cruciform church built in the 13th century, which was extended in the 15th and 16th centuries. It contains several 16th-century tombs and Wessel Gansfort’s 18th-century tomb. Much of the wall and roof paintwork has been preserved although painted over after the Reformation. Of particular note is a 16th-century depiction of the life of Jesus Christ. Its organ contains stops dating back to 1450 and still has a great sound.
Today the church is sometimes used for services by various groups in the separated altar area. Gravestones form the floor at this end of the church. The nave is occupied by ESNS, the European Music Platform, and has a cafe and at least 4 sound booths. Mojo, a music event promotor had an auction on memorabilia from its many concerts – I bought two T-shirts for €5 each.
World Heritage Sites:
Ir.D.F. Woudagemaal (D.F. Wouda Steam Pumping Station) is the largest still operational steam-powered pumping station in the world. Opened in 1920, it was built to pump excess water out of Friesland and is located at Tacozijl just outside Lemmer.
In 1967, after running on coal for 47 years, the boilers were converted to run on heavy fuel oil. It has a pumping capacity of 4,000 m³ per minute and is currently used to supplement the existing pumping capacity of the J.L. Hooglandgemaal in Stavoren in case of exceptionally high water levels in Friesland; this usually happens a few days per year.
Tentative WHS:
Royal Eise Eisinga Planetarium (see above)
Koloniën van Weldadigheid (Colonies of Benevolence) (01/12/2015). The Society of Benevolence was a private organization in the 19th century that wanted to help poor families, mostly from the big cities, to build their own existence as a farmer. In the 20th century, the emphasis of the work shifted from poverty reduction to the management of cultural and forest land.
The Netherlands was heavily depleted in the early nineteenth century, after French rule. Many families lived in urban areas in cities. Johannes van den Bosch took steps to try to eradicate poverty. In the end, it failed as he had to borrow money in order to maintain the colonies. For the settlers, placement in the so-called free colonies meant a great change in their lives. Many were ‘transplanted’ from the big city in an environment that was foreign to them. Some managed to save well, but others were happy to return to their place of origin.
Westerbeeksloot. In 1818, 52 families started the “test” colony, after 4.5 years 42 families remained. The company then built definitive colonies: Frederiksoord, Wilhelminaoord and Boschoord (in southwest Drenthe) and Willemsoord Den Helder from 1818- 1911 with 1,400 families. Education, vocational training, horticultural, agricultural, and forestry schools. Vagrants and beggars were placed in penal colonies in Veenhuizen and Ommerschans. In the south, colonies were established in Merksplas, Hoogstraten, Wortel, and Merkplas (now a criminal institution and a center for asylum seekers who have exhausted all legal remedies.
Today, it is a foundation responsible for 1400 hectares of cultivated and forest land including Landgoed Boschoord of the National Park Drents-Friese Wold, the museum De Koloniehof in Frederiksoord, and in Veenhuizen, the National Prison Museum is located in a former workstation at Oude Gracht.
Some observations on the Netherlands.
1. The Dutch must be the greatest earthmovers of all time. The entire west and north of the country are protected by a dyke – 10-12 feet high in the Zuiderzee but 25 feet high on the Atlantic side. The area west and north of Amsterdam is very low-lying and a mecca for canals. Water is pumped constantly. No houses have basements in the country.
2. There is a dearth of lay-bys and pull-offs on all roads. Try to text or use Google Maps is difficult to find anywhere to pull off. The few that exist are packed with semi-trailers and there are no facilities, that is no bathrooms! This also means it is unlikely to find one to sleep at.
3. The cyclists here are the most entitled people on earth. Everyone gives them the right of way, including pedestrians. Driving is complicated as one must also look out for them. The bikes are the clunkiest, slowest looking things, but then again this is such a crowded country, and speeds are low.