Austria

Since Jay and I had little in mind as “must sees” for our Europe trip, much of the trip planning was based on the “familiarity principle”: “I’ve heard of that city, it must have something to see, let’s go there!” Austria certainly fell into that category; there was nothing specific that drew us to the country, just a vague sense that people sometimes go to Austria, so there is probably something there.

We spent one day in Salzburg and two days in Vienna and in the end Austria exceeded my expectations. We easily could have spent more time there but I’ve long since come to terms with the fact that there are just too many things to see in the world to squeeze everything into one trip.

Salzburg

Salzburg is tourism machine. From what I can tell, it is famous because of Mozart and the publicity gained from the Sound of Music and not much else. But the city takes these stereotypes and milks them to the end. According to our hostel’s front desk, the Sound of Music has nothing to do with Austria (though it was really filmed there), yet it is everywhere. The film is in pictures on every map and billboard, in all the shops, on special tours (there is a full-day tour that takes you around to all the filming locations while playing the soundtrack) and playing every night at our hostel (it used to be on loop—the employees eventually put their feet down). And then there is Mozart—his two houses (birthplace and family home) are major tourist draws in the center of the city and Mozart has his own truffle, available everywhere. I have no idea what Mozart has to do with truffles and neither did the shop keepers nor the internet. I guess a chocolate company just dedicated a line of truffles to famous Austrians and Mozart was the most popular, so then all the other chocolate companies started copying it.

Mozart wants you to buy a truffle.

Even with all that crazy tourist pandering, Salzburg must be one of the prettiest cities in the world. The setting is beautiful, again with green hills, jagged mountains and clear rivers. The city itself is hard not to love: compact, well-maintained and full of delightful old architecture that was not destroyed during the war. Salzburg looks as if it was designed in anticipation of postcard pictures. No mater where you are, one click of the camera will capture more than one beautiful historic site.

Mountain view from the top of the fortress

Old town view from the hike to the fortress

From front to back: Mirabell Gardens, Franzikanerkirche, Peterskirche, Hohansalzburg Fortress

Walking around Salzburg was the best part of the visit (in addition to watching Sound of Music in the hostel) and the background music provided by the many talented street performers made it even better. The Mozart museum and fortress tour were unmemorable.

Vienna

I had absolutely no idea Vienna was so important to European history! This blog post is already too long without including a history lesson, so just trust me on this one: Vienna=Big Deal in Europe, seat of the Holy Roman Empire, Hapsburgs, seat of the First German Reich, homeland of Hitler, cross-road between East and West Europe, etc, etc. Walking around the city, I was struck by how many different cultures were represented within Vienna and perhaps it is that amalgamation of many European cultures that makes Vienna so unique and appealing.

First, Vienna has a famous Spanish Riding School. Why is there a Spanish riding school in Austria? Because more than 400 years ago, a Spanish king ascended to the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and brought the Lipizzaner horses with him as a prized possession for his new court. Soon it became clear that importing horses from Spain was not a practical financial plan and two breeding grounds for the horses were established. Though time has moved past the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian monarchy, and neither of the original breeding grounds is still on Austrian land, the Spanish Riding School is still going strong as a private company, and is a huge part of Austrian culture. The main school, of which we took a tour, is in the center of the city within the Hofburg Palace complex and there is a training center and breeding ground in the countryside. At any given time, there are about 110 stallions in the program that are carefully bred from six different blood lines (descending directly from the original royal horses). The horses rotate between training in the country (“vacation”), performing in the city, and touring around the world. Each horse specializes in only one trick of the special tricks that the riding school performs. All the tricks are based off natural male horse behavior, but these horses perform them perfectly. Three involve the horse doing things on just its back legs, like hopping, and three involved the horse doing jumps and things with the riders directing from the ground. 

I can't get it to rotate right, but turn your head to see the horse tricks!

Seeing the school was so cool. My favorite things were (a) the “horse walk” they have in the summer ring, like a giant revolving door they can program to walk horses in a circle at different speeds and changing directions. (b) Getting to sit in the VIP seats of the performance ring. And (c) seeing the horses up close in the stables. The horses are so beautiful, small and round and white—almost the opposite of the aesthetic ideal for a horse in the American West.  The horses are born black or brown then turn white after the age of four, but the few that don’t turn white are thought to be good luck and are always kept around.

Performance ring from the VIP seats

No pictures allowed in the stable, but I caught the horses en route to the performance

The second place you really see the blending of cultures is in the buildings on the Ringstrasse, the road circling the city center along the old city walls. These buildings were all built in the mid-1800s, but each was built in the style that reflects the time period famous for the function the building serves. So for example, the city hall is built to promote self-determination and thus is designed in the Neo-Gothic style of the 1400s. The parliament is built to promote intelligent discourse and thus is designed like a building in ancient Greece. Pretty cool idea, and architecturally a lot more interesting than a whole bunch of 19^th century buildings together.

City Hall

Parliament

Some other highlights of Vienna were the St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the Schönbrunn Palace, and the music museum (Haus der Musik). The St. Stephen’s Cathedral is both an impressive building and an impressive story. Parts of the cathedral look just like the cathedrals we’ve seen in every other city. But then the roof is completely unique. It is made of 200,000 clay tiles laid mosaic style into patterns and pictures. Apparently the roof is very steep to shed the massive amounts of snow Vienna gets and if the roof was tiled in one color it would make the cathedral feel oppressive, so they made pretty patterns.

The story of St. Stephen’s during WW2, however, is not a happy one. The cathedral escaped Allied bombing unscathed, because the Allies at that point were not carpet bombing but strategically targeting things like bridges and other infrastructure. At the very end of the war, the Austrians were sure the Russians were coming to destroy and loot the city, so one night, the Austrians looted their own city, including the shops surrounding St. Stephen’s and then set them on fire. The ash and fire blew over to the Cathedral, destroying the roof, and the windows, and a good portion of the structure. But the Russians never came and the war ended. Immediately after the war, St. Stephen’s Cathedral became a symbol of Austrian guilt, both of their greed in looting their fellow countrymen and also of falling in line behind the Third Reich so easily. The city rallied around the reconstruction of the Cathedral and the process was a key factor in revitalizing the culture and infrastructure of the city. But the guilt of that time is still felt whenever an Austrian passes St. Steven’s.

The Schönbrunn Palace was the summer palace of the Hapsburg family who ruled most of Europe for most of history. It contains 1,441 rooms and 500 acres of gardens. We took the “Grand Tour” through 40 of the rooms, each of which has a different character. I loved that the Palace was not fixed in time (in contrast to the Neushwanstein castle) and you could see how it changed according to the style of the times and the preferences of the monarchs.

Schonbrunn Palace

The Haus der Musik was our last stop in Vienna. After the incredibly dry Mozart museum I went to in Salzburg, I was a bit skeptical about the Haus der Musik but I wanted to give appreciation of Viennese musical history a second shot. Luckily, the museum was much better than the Mozart one, though the exhibits were still pretty hit or miss. The first part of the museum is dedicated to the Vienna Philharmonic, where we watched some videos of old performances (including the Star Wars theme song!) and I learned that conductors actually do more than just make funny hand movements—they control the speed and volume of the different sections, mostly through improvisation. The largest part of the museum was dedicated to the science of sound. It was very strange. Lots of fun interactive things to do, but not all that educational and at times downright confusing. The only thing I really learned will not be a shock to anyone—Jay does have much better hearing than the rest of us: he could hear up to 15,139 Hz to my 13,123 Hz. The last section was the best, going through the great Viennese composers (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss and Mahler). I didn’t realize that before the Viennese Classical period of Haydn/Mozart/Beethoven, all music was composed for God or King. 1780 was the first time music was composed for mass enjoyment instead of reinforcing social structures. That’s my new cool fun fact from Austria.

Crash Course on Germany

Munich was not technically our first stop in Germany—we also had “train layovers” in Hamburg and Köln during which Jay and I did some quick “steeple chasing” to see the main highlights of the towns—but it was the first place we spent any real time. The most immediately striking thing to me about Germany is how much World War Two is still omnipresent. In Amsterdam, the war had clear long-term effects on the city, obviously in the complete rebuild of the bombed out neighborhoods but also more subtly in that the trees are exactly the same height because the old trees were all cut down for firewood during the war. But in Munich (and the surrounding area) the fallout from the war is more obvious and will always be a major part of the fabric of the city/country: many of the buildings were never really rebuilt from the war and instead have a façade painted on them to appear as if they had been rebuilt; Dachau will always be synonymous with the atrocities of concentration camps, no mater how hard the local tourism board tries to highlight other town features. 

I guess you can call this "reconstructed"...

Right in the main square, some nice facade painting

Upon arrival in Munich, Jay and I quickly hopped on another New Europe Free City Tour. The tour was not quite as good as our last one, I think because the guide hadn’t quite figured out how to spin the WW1 and WW2 history with the sunnier side of Bavaria into a coherent story about the city, but it was still a great quick intro. My favorite thing was seeing the subtle Holocaust tributes around the city. Our guide said that Munich’s approach to Holocaust remembrance is unique: rather than have a big showy display with lots of signs and information, the city has many small subtle memorials, which you then go home, google it, get curious about what you find, and end up learning more about WW2 than you had set out to. An interesting approach I think, and here are two examples that stuck with me:

• Early in Nazi rule, the clergy of the Frauenkirche cathedral decided to hide items of monetary and spiritual value for the nearby synagogue in their basement. The cathedral was bombed, though the towers (and thus the basement below them) were spared because the Allies used the towers to mark the city center of Munich. After the war, as a thank you, the Jewish clergy helped fund the rebuild of the cathedral. To this day, there is menorah painted in the ceiling of the cathedral to pay tribute to this unusual partnership.

• In another part of the city, there is an alley with a path of bronze stones set into the cobble stone. Apparently, the alley was where objectors would dodge the nearby Hitler memorial for to avoid saluting the SS. If you were caught taking the alley too many times, you were arrested (and likely killed), yet this threat did not deter many people and their bravery is thus memorialized.

The next day we took the train out to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp and a model for all the others. Like the Anne Frank House, I haven’t processed the experience enough to write coherently about it. All I’ll say for now is that I have no idea how folks still live in that area. I can’t imagine facing those atrocities everyday—there are prominent remembrance signs throughout the area, the town bike path is the old rail line to the camp, and many of the roads and buildings in the area were built with prisoner labor.

To try to get my mind off the camp a bit, I spent the afternoon at the Deutsches Science and Technology Museum. This museum was an interesting example of much the guide book you purchase can shape your trip. Our Frommer’s has a half-page rave of the museum:

“The world’s largest and oldest technological museum of its kind, the Deutches Museum contains a huge collection of artifacts and historic originals…For one of the most popular exhibits, you can descend into the bowels of a coal and salt mine…What makes the museum fascinating for adults and children alike is that there are buttons to push, gears to crank, and levers to pull. In any case, you could easily spend a half-day here.”

And Rough Guides has a small, skeptical paragraph:

“Munich’s most overwhelming museum—the Deutches Museum—occupies a mid-stream island in the Isar. Covering every conceivable aspect of technical endeavor…this is the most compendious collection of its type in Germany.”

I think if I had only purchased the Rough Guide book I would have skipped the museum, but Frommer’s made it sound so awesome! In the end, I think both summaries are true. The exhibits are sweet, especially the mining exhibit, and it’s more of a history of science and technology museum than I was expecting, with technologies for any given endeavor from its earliest days up to the 1980s so you can see the development of the field. On the other hand, there are about 65 different topics covered and the only way to really appreciate the museum would be to get an annual membership and tackle one or two sections per week (and speak German, because most signs are not translated).

I don't know what year this represents of what they are mining, but how cool!

Lastly, we ventured into the Bavarian countryside to check out the Neushwanstein castle. I think of castles as an artifact of the middle ages, but this one was built by King Ludwig II starting in 1869! It was never finished because he died mysteriously in 1886, but the rooms that are finished are insane. The castle was designed as a tribute to the operatic works of Wager, and each room is themed according to one of his operas. The strangest room is the cave room—truly, a room designed to look like a cave, right of the king’s private quarters—honoring one of Wagner's operas set in a cave, I think. Most of the rest of the rooms are just way over the top ornate. Jay and I decided that room decorations increase to a point where you are like, “Ok, come on, too much,” and then if you keep decorating they come back around to “That’s so awesome!” I wish I could have taken pictures, because it’s hard to describe—every inch of the room, floors, ceilings, walls, was covered in mural and mosaic work; the kings bedroom was full of intricate woodwork that took 14 carvers four and a half years to complete; the gold and bejeweled chandeliers each had 64 candles and weighted 2,000 pounds.

Oh yeah, and then there is the fun fact that Neushwanstein inspired the castle in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. The location is stunning, surrounded by wooded hills and alpine lakes with snow capped mountains towering the background. And the castle really does look like it belongs in a fairy tale:

Princess Castle!!

The castle as it would look without the scaffolding on the big tower

Note: It’s interesting as I go back and reread this—I expected the Bavarian culture (beer gardens and the tasty food) to feature more prominently in my memory of Munich. Somehow against the background of everything else we saw, that part just seems, frankly, irrelevant.

Swiss Cities

While in Switzerland, Jay and I also spent a few days in Bern and Zürich. Both cities had a great feel, just not a lot of things we actually wanted to do and I am happy to now be on a train to Munich.

I think of America as a pretty national-pride heavy country, but cities in Switzerland take it to another level—everywhere you look there are Swiss flags, flags for the region and flags for the locality. On top of that, Jay pointed out the nationalist (anti-EU) advertisements all over the place. A good one had a circle of hats with the EU star floating in the water, one man completely drowned (presumably Greece), and the whole ring trying to pull the last man in the water down (presumably Switzerland). Another good and incredibly common one was of a boulder labeled “AUNS initiative” that had knocked over a statue a demolished a shield of the Swiss flag.

 

Zürich

I was pretty skeptical of Zürich when we first arrived; luckily, it grew on me, in spite of the rain. The two things I quickly noticed was that, first, most people probably live outside Zürich and commute in for work, because the city was deserted mid-day Sunday. And second, Zürich really is a very well-off city, and you could feel the cost of living more than in Oslo. I’m pretty sure we saw more luxury vehicles than people. We spent a nice mellow day walking around the old cobble stone streets then went on a boat around Lake Zürich.

Flags on every building in Bern and Zurich: overkill.

Largest clock in Europe

Zurich from the water

Bern

Following the trend of narrow stairs and great views, a highlight of Bern was climbing up the 270 stairs of the St. Vincent belfry to see the Bernese Alps.

Another highlight was the Bear Pits, which has housed brown bears (the city mascot) since the early sixteen century. When reading about Bern, I had a hard time believing that they actually had a 6,000 square meter park for some bears in the middle of the city, but in fact, yes, the city has four brown bear mascots living in an enclosed (but free to the public) park next to the river.

Bear Park

Bern city mascot: hard life!

Lastly, we visited the Einstein Museum, an incredibly in depth exhibit on the physicist’s life and contemporary historical events that shaped his life. It was beautifully done and very interesting, though the theory of relativity presentations gave me some serious MIT flashbacks. I can pinpoint the exact moment physics got too theoretical for me—gyroscopes, the last lesson in first semester mechanics. After that, I could strong arm the math enough to do well on exams (thanks in no small part to Andy Brown) but it never really made sense to me. Somehow my brain just can’t conceptualize beyond a certain level of abstractness (or I guess microscopic-ness in the case of E&M) and physics was one of the courses that made me feel really stupid during college. Luckily, working at the Health Foundation and finding the wonderful (applied and tangible!) field of evaluation knocked the MIT-induced intellectual insecurity right out of me. It will be a continuing goal in my life to surround myself with people and organizations that appreciate and foster many different forms of intelligence.

Swiss Countryside

When planning the Switzerland leg of our adventure, Jay and I were certain we wanted to go on a scenic train ride in/near the Swiss Alps, but we weren’t sure which one to pick. Our decision was quickly made by three other Swiss stereotypes: cheese, chocolate, and castles. The Golden Pass Line runs a train called the Chocolate Train from Montreux, on the shores of Lake Geneva, to Gruyéres for a tour of the cheese dairy and the Gruyéres castle, onto Broc for a tour and tasting at the Masion Cailler-Nestlé factory and then returning to Montreux. Sold.

The tricky part is that the Chocolate Train only runs a few days a week and only a small portion of the tickets are sold online. Our book said we could buy tickets at any Swiss train station, but the folks in the Zürich station had no what we were talking about, so basically we had to go all the way to Montreux and cross our fingers that there would be tickets available for the next day. We were slightly comforted by the fact that another scenic line, the classic Golden Pass Train, also left from Montreux, so at least we’d get to do that, but it was still a gamble. The universe happened to be on our side last Wednesday at 3 pm: Not only did we get two of the remaining four seats on Thursday’s Chocolate Train but we were also able to nab an upgrade to the “Special Panoramic VIP” seats on Friday’s Golden Line Train for a mere 10 Swiss Franks a piece.

There’s not a lot to see in Montreux itself. It’s on Lake Geneva, which is gorgeous, and there is a famous castle near by, but otherwise it just feels like Aspen: over the top swanky and not a good place for budget travelers. To me it was a necessary evil for the two days of train gloriousness that followed and at least it was pretty.

Chillon Castle, Lake Geneva, "Pre-Alps"

The first day, we woke up bright and early and went to the train, where we were served a breakfast fitting for an experience called the Chocolate Train:

Breakfast of Champions

 Then we were off, zig zagging up the valley walls above Montreux and along the side of the mountain range to Gruyéres. I have never been to a cheese dairy before, I didn’t eat cheese until about a year and a half ago, and there are still very few kinds of cheese I like, and yet the visit to the Gruyéres factory may have been my favorite part. That’s how cool it was. Cheese making is a compact process, with 95% of things happening in the same large room, so it is perfectly set up for tours. From one place, you can see the curdling of the milk, the transfer to the cheese rounds, the pressing of the rounds, and the submersion in the salt bath. Though there is some assistance by machine, the process is still primarily done by hand, with the cheese makers tasked with timing all the steps in the process by taste. 

Cheese maker says: "ready!" then those things on the left are filled with curd and pressed.

The sheer numbers involved are also astounding: in one day, a cow eats 100 kg of grass and drinks 85 kg of water which makes 25 liters of milk; 400 liters of milk becomes one 35 kg round of Gruyéres cheese; the factory does four cycles of cheese making per day, turning four 4,800 liter tanks of milk into forty-eight 35 kg rounds (twelve rounds per 4,800 liters of milk). We were given a sample pack of cheeses aged three, eight, and ten months and Jay and I purchased a bit of mild cheese that I liked and some meat to have for lunch with our bread before visiting the castle.

Cheese!

That's 1/140th of a round

The Gruyéres castle was a pretty standard European castle—we didn’t spend much time inside opting to read in the sun instead—though it was being used as a exhibition space for this cool sculptor from Zimbabwe, which was a fun twist. From there we headed off to tour Cailler, an upscale chocolate subsidiary of Nestlé. Having just been in Belgium and heard claims of Belgium superiority on the chocolate front, I was pleased to learn that the two countries are not actually in competition for this title: Belgium is famous for their dark chocolates with hazelnut filling whereas Switzerland (and actually Nestlé specifically) pioneered milk chocolate. I say, there is enough room in the world for two superior chocolate countries as long as it means more chocolate for the rest of us.

Coming from Gruyéres, the Cailler factory tour felt impersonal and industrial. First, you are shuffled though this fully automated, Disneyland-esque, mutli-room, multimedia demonstration of the history and production of chocolate. It may have been cool, unfortunately we had the pushiest Indian family ever and their obnoxious uncontrolled child in our group. Then, you walk through a “production line” of one of their chocolates that is clearly just a tourist demonstration and completely isolated from the rest of production. However, the saving grace of the tour is the tasting at the end: you are set to roam free in a room of chocolate samples, more than 20 to try in total. Predictably, I tried to make it through all of them and discovered the factory’s secret sample limitation plan: a wicked stomach ache. 

Chocolate tasting is serious business

Chocolates!

From there we boarded the train and were whisked back through the Swiss countryside to Montreux, where the next day we woke up, boarded another train for the Golden Pass Line, and discovered the glory of the Special Panoramic VIP seats: You are in the front row of the train, surrounded by huge windows with nothing impeding your view. Well, almost nothing, the windshield wipers were in the way, but the driver sits above your head. 

Best view ever

VIPs. clearly.

The scenery on the Golden Pass Line exceeded my expectations. We hugged the western side of the Alps the whole way and passed many beautiful green hills below jagged mountains. I also really enjoyed seeing all the Swiss Chalets, reminiscent of Fraser before the mini-mansion boom (especially the carved porch rails). The tunnels were also cool, because in a normal train you never really get to see the tunnel. We had to switch trains twice during the five-hour trip (because the track changes and the same car cannot go all the way from Montreux to Luzern), the weather turned on us, and train fatigue definitely set in but it was an awesome day. There is a reason the route is nicknamed “Switzerland in a Nutshell”:

Just, wow.

Ski area in the middle!

The one on the far right was one of my favorites

Brussels, Bruges and Bonnie!

So Belgium is definitely not the country for me. After four days in Amsterdam, Brussels is a huge let down—the city feels very generic and dirty in a way that makes it seem unloved. Sure, it has the standard European ornate buildings (churches and palaces and such) but most of them look like they haven’t been cleaned in over a decade.

Ewww.

Brussels also houses the EU headquarters, which is in a completely separate part of town and is primarily made up of unmemorable glass office buildings. Jay and I only had a short while to explore Brussels and we didn’t even use all the time we had, opting for laundry and rest instead.

The next day, we headed out to Bruges, which was much more enjoyable than Brussels and a nice place to spend a day. Lots of old fancy buildings, lots of red roofed old buildings, lots of canals. My favorite part of the town was climbing up the 366 steps to the top of the Belfry. The views are great, the 47-bell carillon (like a big music box) was another fun feat of engineering to admire, and the stairway clearly not intended for two-way traffic was quite amusing.

Bruges from above

Carillon with 30,500 teeth!

Stairwell built for one

But by far the best thing about Bruges was seeing Bonnie!! Bonnie is a classmate from MIT whom I lived with the summer I was working in DC. We’ve been close since then, though we don’t see each other often because that's just what happens after graduating, following jobs around the country, and letting life get started. She was in Belgium for a wedding and though we didn’t try to force coordinating schedules, the timing just happened to work out beautifully and we were both in Burges the same day. Modern communications are great but there really is no replacement for seeing a friend face to face and I am so thankful to have old friends who make time to see me when they can.

Bonnie and Elena in Bruges!

Kinderdijk

As a day trip from Amsterdam, we went to see the Kinderdijk windmills, a recommendation from my Dutch roommate on my Tibet tour. I expected the windmills to be a huge tourist draw but was pleasantly surprised by the small crowds, mostly just locals and Asian tourists (Kinderdijk was not in our guide books, but I suspect it made it into the Chinese ones). We took a bit of a scenic route to get there, taking a bus from Utrecht to Rotterdam (Kinderdijk is on the Rotterdam side of the route), which was actually awesome because we had a chance to see where most of the Dutch population lives. The area felt extremely pastoral, with many canals and green pastures and thatch-roofed houses, yet the population density was high. It’s not quite rural but definitely not suburban; I can’t think of a comparable area in the States.

The Kinderdijk windmills themselves were seriously one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Built in the 1500s, both the concept and the engineering was more advanced than I expected. First, there is the sheer size of the system: Kinderdijk is made up of 19 windmills (eight round stone windmills, eight octagonal thatched windmills and three specialized windmills) that move water between a series of canals to regulate water levels and maintain proper irrigation for the area’s fields. Each windmill is huge, and then seeing 19 along a few canals is quite the sight. And just think about the coordination that must have been necessary to get the mills to work together and move water to the right places at the right times—yippie for early systems engineers!

Octagonal thatched mills

Round stone mills (on the right)

Second, there is the mechanics of how each mill works: A big ship steering wheel at the base of the mill spins the whole top of the mill to point the blades in the right direction to catch the wind. The blades were half shingled and half cloth, so the cloth could be tightened to catch more wind when the water needed to be moved faster. The wind spins the blades which turn an axle attached to a wooden cog that turns another wooden cog with an axle all the way down to the ground where another cog set spins the water scoop to move water from one canal to the other. There’s also a gigantic brake pad controlled by a rope near the steering wheel for when enough water has been moved. I think it’s a bit easier to see than describe.

Windmill Mechanics

The mill is huge, so naturally the parts of the mill are huge and the precision of the engineering is impressive, especially considering they were made by hand before the time of the water lathe. 

Each of the 19 windmills housed a mill master and his family who were in charge of maintaining the mill and turning it on and off at the right time. And the crazy part—PEOPLE STILL LIVE IN THE MILLS!!

This one has a museum in it. But others had families!

Such a great day trip on all accounts, with three closing thoughts to share:

1. Jay and I have slightly different sightseeing preferences (i.e., I don’t care for churches and have a low tolerance for art museums whereas he appreciates both) but we were both captivated by the inside of the windmill. Thus, these “feats of engineering” (as Jay calls them) are sure to feature prominently in future European adventures.
2. When visiting religious ruins in Peru, Cole and I talked a bit about the interesting transition over time from man worshiping and living at the mercy of nature and man trying to control and rule over nature (ancient cultures the former, Conquistadors the latter). The Kinderdijk windmills struck me as a near perfect balance of these two sides. Instead of trying to control nature or getting complacent about their lack of control over nature, the 16th century Dutch learned how to live in harmony with it, moving the water around where they needed it but fundamentally understanding that they lived in a place with near constant flood risk.
3. Standing in Kinderdijk, you can see construction in all directions, sometimes within about 500 meters. Since the start of my trip, I’ve poked fun at the concept of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, mostly because it seems to encompass everything of interest in the places I’ve been (sometimes whole towns) and is emphasized inconsistently—some places are very proud of it, some places don’t mention it (Mesa Verde, for example, is a UNESCO site. I've been there many times, including right before leaving the country last year and I had never heard of UNESCO before Nepal.). But watching an old man show his granddaughter around the windmills with construction cranes looming in the background made me understand why UNESCO protection is such a valuable thing—even if the whole surrounding area becomes skyscrapers and subdivisions, the windmills and the canals should stay exactly as they are today for future generations to enjoy.