Travelog Kembara EJ: Zaanse Schans- A Beautiful Dutch Windmill Village

Thursday, March 5, 2020

Zaanse Schans- A Beautiful Dutch Windmill Village

Zaanse Schans memang sebuah perkampungan windmill yang sangat cantik. Tak jemu memandang sepanjang berjalan di situ.

Waktu ku berbackpack ke sana pada tahun 2015, kitorang naik train, berhenti di station Zaandijk dan lepas tu, sila lah menapak dalam 15-20 minit ke dalam.. tapi tak pe.. cuaca sejuk nyaman... sambil-sambil berjalan tu, banyak view cantik.. bolehlah posing sana, posing sini.. hehee..

Zaanse Schans is a small village on the banks of the Zaan river, complete with tidy green houses, real working windmills, and small topical museums such as the Clock Museum and the first Albert Heijn store.

In the 17th and 18th century there were thousands of windmills along the dykes; sawmills, dye mills, oil mills etc that powered the Dutch economy. The Zaanse Schans village gives you a picture of what it must have been like. Not all the windmills and buildings started out in Zaanse Schans, many of them were moved here from the region as they came under threat from urban development across North Holland.

Dah tiba di windmill besar, boleh masuk ke dalam dan naik sampai tingkat atas tengok view..

The windmills are all working mills, and the perform various functions, including a saw mill, a paint mill (grinding pigments), and oil mill (grinding linseed or peanuts to draw off the oil).

On the ground floor of the oil mill for example, you can see huge grindstones crushing peanuts which were then roasted and pressed so that the oil could be extracted. Both the grindstones and the press are driven by the windmill.

Climbing a narrow ladder to the first floor gives a view of the huge wooden cogs that transform the wind energy down to the grindstone. From this floor small doors lead onto the outside platform where you can watch the sails of the windmill go past. They fly past - really quickly! One full rotation took 16 seconds, this dropped to about 10 seconds as the wind picked up.

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