the netherlands

The molenaar said to us, ‘I am not master of the wind. I am master of the mill.’

He had a lot to say about controlling nature, and letting it lead. He had a bit to say about Australian politics.

We met the molenaar on our last day in the Netherlands. We’d been in windmill country for four days and were yet to see a mill except those flashing past on the train. Only a few seconds from the road we found a patch of country detached from the city behind us, and on it the mill turning heavily in the wind. He spoke English to us, took us round the side of the hill, and told us the history of the mill. This is a water mill, designed to keep the water level on one side high and on one side low. To keep the ocean and the rivers out.

It's a flat country, constantly plagued by the ocean and its determination to reclaim the land. In some places, the land and the water meet like a line drawn on paper. It seems like a heavy rain might send the water over. We saw places like this on our second day, when we cycled to the historical village of Delft, trailing in a wheeled duck line along the red paved paths.

In the Netherlands, cycling is not only for tourists and enthusiasts in padded tights. Bicycles clutter the weather-protected underside of bridges at train stations. There are traffic signals for cyclists, who also have right-of-way at roundabouts, would you believe it. This seems the height of civilisation to me. People on bicycles aren’t even faced with looks of contempt through windscreens, or barraged with shouted pleasantries like, ‘Get off the bloody road.’ In Australia, cyclists are neither car nor pedestrian, and therefore are generally despised by both parties. Here, business men in suits pedal straight-backed with bunches of flowers, teenagers form quaint bicycle gangs, and the elderly seem to have better knee joints than I do.

Cycling in the city is a mission, especially for someone shorter than the average Dutch bicycle owner. Stopping at every intersection is less a matter of putting one foot down and more an equation of balancing the equipment while allowing my feet to free fall.

Cycling in the country is a pleasure. Our trip to Delft took us 10km out of Rotterdam, through countryside burdened with sleepy dairy cows and heritage mansions, to the town square at which occurred the country’s most famous assassination.

On a summer day 1584, William of Orange was shot dead, somewhere behind what is now a poffertjes stall or perhaps an umbrella shielding potent Dutch cheeses from the sun. Don’t feel bad for William. He's got a huge statue replica of himself, complete with seasonal seagull tribute.

And besides, the murderer had his non-essential organs removed with red hot tongs, was quartered while still alive, had his heart torn from his chest and placed on his face, and was then beheaded, just in case. I do love a good medieval quartering.

Above all this, then and now, the new (new-er) church and the town hall throw their steeples to the sky and pierce the flatness of the landscape. We climbed more than three hundred dizzying stone steps to the top, our way narrow and lit by thin sunlight through grimy windows. These structures have stood for hundreds of years above Delft, which apparently avoided the advances of the German bombers that flattened Rotterdam’s harbour in the war (a rainy-day trip to the WWII museum acquainted me with the Dutch perspective).

There is plenty of history in the Netherlands. At the mill, the molenaar took us inside the tiny living quarters of the mill, where a hundred-year-old poffertjes pan hangs above the original stove, which must have struggled to warm the inside of the stone mill, cool even in the summer.

Also, have a look at Ella's Holland.