Kinderdijk, Holland
The
Viking Gullveig sailed during the night.
We were pleased that a river boat is so smooth that we could feel no
seasickness or ripples at all. The ship
moved at about eight miles per hour, on average, during our journey up the
Rhine. We were surprised that the Rhine
is such a busy working river. Large
industrial barges passed every few minutes, carrying loads of chemicals, fuel,
minerals, scrap metal, and all sorts of other products. We were also surprised to see the river was
busy with the traffic of many pleasure boats and cruise ships similar to
ours. I don’t think I have ever seen a
river in the United States that had so much boat traffic, not even the mighty
Mississippi.
On
the morning of Saturday, June 7, we were docked in Kinderdijk, home of a large
number of Dutch windmills. We walked
along the large dike and heard our guide explain the process of pumping out
water to drain and reclaim land that is well below sea level. The many windmills were operational, but they
no longer pump water. That job is now
done with much more powerful coal fired electric power plants. We were impressed with the size of the beautiful
mills. I learned that in a former day,
the miller and his wife and family of 10-12 children lived inside each
mill. In fact, so many children lived in
the area, that the millers named it Kinderdijk.
Even today, adventurous renters may lease a windmill for the summer and
live inside. We toured a mill and
climbed the steep narrow stairs. The
families learned to use the limited space very efficiently. We learned that the millers used a method of
communication that involved moving the huge blades of the mill into certain
positions to indicate news to the distant millers. One position showed good news – births,
marriages, etc. Another indicated a
death or serious illness. Yet another
indicated the time to co-ordinate the timing of the pumping.
We
discovered the mechanisms of the windmills and how the millers regulated the
speed of the blades by adding or removing canvas coverings on the blades. They were also able to move the top turrets
where blades were attached by using a system of chains and posts or rocks on
the ground. The entire top of the mill
could turn to catch the wind from any direction. It really was a marvel of engineering in spite
of very primitive tools and technology.
The
area of Kinderdijk is preserved as a United Nations UNESCO World Heritage
site. This is a special and coveted designation
for tourism. The UNESCO folks made a
grand tribute to the ingenuity of the original builders of the dikes, mills,
canal systems, and adjustable waterways.
I fully agree with the UNESCO tribute.
The entire operation is an amazing show of man’s ability to manipulate
his environment to create a better place to live, to work, and to grow
food. I was duly impressed, but at the
same time I couldn’t help noticing the double standard on the part of the
UNESCO folks who blanch with horror at the thought of a modern community who
would drain a swampy lowland and disturb a prized wetland. The pendulum of prosperity and priority does
swing to and fro through the ages. Those
primitive engineers would not be welcomed among today’s environmentalists.
After
a very pleasant tour, we reboarded our ship and began sailing for Cologne,
Germany. We enjoyed watching the many
passing ships, and I took lots of photos in the area of Nijmegen, the Netherlands,
which was the scene of much fighting during World War II. The bridges over the Rhine were fiercely
defended and fought over. I stood on the
top deck of the ship shooting photos and emailing them to Peter, who was online
in his mission office in Brazil. I truly
marveled that the scene before my eyes was almost instantly in front of Peter’s
eyes, many thousands of miles away.
What a miracle!
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