Wandering through the Netherlands – Part 2

We woke up in a pretty morning and we were looking forward to seeing Zaanse Schans. The village next to the river Zaan lies about 20 kilometres north from Amsterdam. We were practically friends with the employees on the main train station as we came to the station every day with another question. For a two-way ride with train to the village, which is about 20 minutes away with the train, we payed 6,2€ per person and saved a lot of money. When our stop came, one of the employees came to us and said that we’ve arrived (you should see our faces when we heard that we’re already on our destination). Signs and a big mill in the distance lead us to our goal, but we were soaked even before we came to the village. It was so windy on the bridge that the wind broke our umbrellas. But this didn’t ruin the dreamy picture of the village from 18th century with 35 traditional small houses that are surrounded with canals, rustic shops and eight wind mills, which still work. The green houses are made of wood. They have big, white windows. A white little bridge is leading to every house over the canal. The village is known after freshly made chocolate milk, even though it was raining, it smelled delicious. A big yellow clog was waiting for us to sit in it and take a photo or two. Luckily you can’t see on the picture how much it rains and how wet we are. In the little houses you can find a museum, a souvenir store, a chocolate factory, farms and a cheese processor. If it were sunny, we’d spend the whole day here. Cold and wet we visited the first restaurant where we warmed up and ate each our own cheesecake. 

 

We also made a spontaneous trip to Edam and Volendam. We saw beautiful pictures of cheese and wind mills on the train station and found out about these two cities. A nice man on the train station (yes, we really were there every day) suggested us that we buy a ticket for a round drive around north Holland and see cities Edam and Volendam. So we bought the ticket for 10 Euros, bought a map and waited for the next day when there was a better forecast. 

 

Volendam lies by the sea and was once a harbour for Edam. By today it has lost this function because they built a canal, which was wide enough for the ships to sail to Edam. Volendam is known after their cheese and clogs factories, which we can find in the city’s vicinity. The locals are happy to show the tourist the old way of making clogs. I admit, until I visited the clog factory, I thought that Netherlanders are masters who make the clogs by hand so I was very surprised when I saw that the clogs are made by more than 100-year-old machine, which makes practically everything itself. The clogs were first worn by farmers and tulip growers on fields as they were cheap and qualitative. After visiting narrow streets and pretty houses, we went to the mill but the wind made sure that we were freezing again. We were rushing from the mill to the bus station with hoods on our heads but the rain still caught us. Yay, another night when we will dry our coats with hairdryers. 

 

The bus came to the station as punctual as a Swiss clock. I am amazed by the public transport abroad every time. With the ticket, which cost us 10 Euros, we were able to exit and enter any time on this circular way from Amsterdam to Edam and back to Amsterdam on a different way. We saw some smaller villages, mills, harbors on the way. Whatever we found interesting. 

 

 

In 5 minutes, we came from Volendam to Edam. And these 5 minutes were crucial, as the rain stopped and it became sunny again. Yay, I could finally pull my brand new camera from the backpack and started taking photos. We quickly found out that the city is much smaller than Volendam and there were less tourists. Volendam is interesting because of edam cheese, which used to be made here. The streets of the red houses by the canal charmed us. We walked to the church Grote Kerk and then to Kaasmarkt. We allowed ourselves to get lost in the city and walk every street. We probably noticed every bicycle that was by the house and every cat on a window shelf, every decoration at the entrance door, which called spring time. Only a small distance away are the endless green meadows. The nature near the city is beautiful. 

 

To be continued...