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Sometime during the night we got underway. I noticed a bit of engine rumble but had no sense at all that we were moving at first. The boat is very smooth. At one point Marion got up and looked out the window and confirmed we were moving. Bodes well for sleeping since we do travel some nights. There were occasional rumblings from the motor to slow or change direction, which seemed to always wake me up though. But I was having trouble sleeping anyway. I think the sea bass for dinner didn’t quite agree with me.
Breakfast with yet more new people. Someone from Vegas and someone from Richmond. Greg and his wife who we met before. Greg is a talker. He apparently got up in the night and went up on deck to watch us traverse a lock. That was more ambitious than I felt.
After breakfast, it was time to tour Kinderdijk. A UNESCO world heritage site where they are maintaining 19 (used to be 20) windmills. The 20th windmill burned down during a storm. Which is interesting. You’d think the rain would keep it from burning but it apparently was hit by lighting. Anyway, they’re down to 19 but are planning to rebuild the 20th. Guess it’s not historically accurate with only 19.
Robert was our tour guide, which he volunteers to do to practice his English for work. He lives in the area. First problem, lots of issues with the tour guide speaker devices. This was the first attempt to use them by most people and 3 or 4 ‘weren’t working’ although I suspect user error for the most part. Little wonder we can’t get tablet devices to read vital signs and transmit over the Internet at my company. These people couldn’t turn on a power switch and wait for the device to find the signal. But ultimately everyone got theirs working, including the Chinese lady, thank God, because it was going to be an issue if it hadn’t. She was starting to get loud.
The whole concept of the windmills is pretty fascinating. They had no rivers for power, or coal deposits or forests to burn. So wind was the power of choice. And using the windmills as giant pumps they were able to pump out low lying (below sea level) areas and make farmland, then keep them from flooding. There was an area for overflow where they hold the water, then when the tide level was right, they pump it out into the river (which is 6’ or so higher). Pretty cool. And quite an engineering feat for the 1600’s.
Each windmill had a miller and his family living in it. Pretty rustic. Think 4 story log cabin. The families tended to be large (10-15 kids). The windmills are not large as living quarters (although much bigger than I thought of them – probably too many miniature golf windmills in my past). So it was a tight squeeze. Little narrow stairways to get up and down. All while wearing wooden shoes, which had to be tricky. Wooden shoes because your feet tended to always be wet and anything else would rot. Ever practical the Dutch.
Speaking of the Dutch, one of the women on our tour, who was Dutch (but from Canada), appeared to be drunk (this at 9am in the morning) and felt the need to loudly interrupt the guide with inane comments. Thanks for being in our group. Not to mention being a slow walker too. But we could have dealt with that. She (and no one else) thought she was *very* funny. Of course apart from her husband (poor man) and the guide, I’m not sure anyone else in our group spoke Dutch so her efforts were in vain. (This was our first interaction with the woman I would name Brune Hilda. She was a delight…)
The day was cloudy and cool and people were complaining about the weather too. No pleasing some people. I thought it was reasonably pleasant, even though the sun wasn’t out. But then again, we’re from Oregon. As long as it’s not raining (and even if it is a little) we’re pretty happy.
They don’t use the windmills anymore. They’ve been replaced by pumping stations (although interestingly enough, ones that still use Archimedes screws like they’ve done for centuries). They can pump 3 times the water with one station as they can with 19 windmills so it makes some sense. But the pumping stations aren’t nearly as picturesque. And no one lives in them.
We were able to go into one of the windmills and climb to the top. The rest we enjoyed from a distance. Most weren’t turning (the sails didn’t have the canvas on them so they didn’t catch the wind). We enjoyed the quiet (when drunk Dutch lady wasn’t shouting something). There were ducks in the canals and sheep grazing. Seemed a hard but nice life for a miller. Although they had to get out there and manually turn the wheel to point the windmill at the wind. And apply the brake if the wind got too high. Coordinate with the other millers so they pumped the right stuff to the right place. But still, not too bad.
It was like living inside a giant clock. The windmill sails turned which turned a cog that turned another cog (horizontal) that turned an axle that turned some more wheels at the bottom that lifted the water. But I guess they weren’t turning all the time. They only needed them to turn when the water needed to be pumped, which depended on the rains. It took them 4 years or so to build a windmill. The sails are something like 25 meters long. It also says something about the Dutch themselves that they were able to organize and collectively do what they did to clear the water. It definitely fostered a sense of community and a ‘we’re all in this together’ spirit that you didn’t find in say the American West with it’s ideal of rugged individualism and carving out your own space in the wilderness. No one was going to build their own dike, windmill and water management system.
Back to the boat for a nice lunch with yet two more new couples. Marion’s waiter friend once again grabbed us as we came in. He’s angling for an extra tip. But he’s pushing too hard. It’s going to cost him if he keeps it up. Finally had a stroopwaffel (and ice cream) for dessert. This is a famous Dutch dessert we were told to try by friends. But I was unimpressed.
After lunch, the safety drill. Which consisted of putting on our life jackets, which the staff had conveniently placed on the bed, and walking forward to the lounge. So a hundred or so 65-85 year olds in a narrow corridor trying to get life jackets on and snapped while walking down a narrow hallway. It was pretty much an exercise in visualizing our death should an actual emergency arise. We will never make it through. Although in an actual emergency, we could go the other way and it’s only a few doors down to the exit. So maybe we’ll have a chance. Certainly if it comes to it, the old people are going down. They’ve lived a full life. We’ve got some time left.
At the moment I’m sitting on the ‘sun’ deck as we make our way up the Rhine (or possibly still the Waal at this point) on our way to Cologne tonight. The river is still very industrial here although there are some nice looking homes as well interspersed between ship yards and gravel beds and the like. There’s lots of traffic on the river. The occasional touring boat like ours but mostly very low and long boats hauling sand or possibly rocks or something like that. A few with containers and some with vehicles. But there is almost always someone passing us in one direction or the other. It’s a major “highway”.
Marion came up and joined me towards dinner time. We joined Greg and his wife, and Tom and Debby (who Marion likes a lot) and a new couple from near Reading in PA (close to my hometown). (This was John and Sue but we didn’t know that yet.)
We’re still only about halfway to Cologne. Someone gets to drive all night while we sleep.
6/25/14
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