Windmills, Clogs, and Cheese, Oh My!

Our first weekend in the Netherlands! On Saturday both the World Governance and Smart Cities programs in Amsterdam took a trip to Zaanse Schans. We started the morning off by taking a charter bus to the Dutch town of Zaandam to visit the neighborhood of Zaanse Schans. Zaanse Schans is home to the iconic Dutch windmills the Netherlands is famous for. The village, about 20 minutes away from Amsterdam, is rich with traditional Dutch history and culture with plenty of workshops and museums to explore. 

The students had the morning and afternoon to wander around the village and visit the unique streets and buildings here. We started with the Zaans Museum, which gave us an interactive history lesson on the town. Afterwards, students made their way through the many different windmills in Zaanse Schans. Each windmill offered a different experience in showcasing the mechanisms and machinery inside the windmill building. The working windmills were used in various ways like grain production, cutting timber, making pigments, and pressing linseed. 

The workshops offered at the village were very fun! The Henri Willig Cheese Farm ‘De Catharina Hoeve’ explained the process of cheese production and offered samples of all the different kinds of cheese they make. Some of the cheese flavors we sampled included Gouda, Edam, goat truffle, herbs, pesto, lavender goat, and even beer flavored! The clog workshop demonstrated how traditional wooden clogs are made using old machinery and logs of wood. The shop sold traditional hand painted clogs, as well as more modern styles.

For lunch, we ate Dutch pancakes, which are similar to French crepes, with either bacon or cheese baked into the pancake. We all had an amazing day exploring, even if we had to experience the rainy and constantly changing weather here!