Day 32 - [R]hine River Cruise (Kinderdijk), The Netherlands
Settling in to cruising life
My first night on board Viking Sigrun was very pleasant, however, the sound of the ship pushing through some choppy water, and occasionally being jostled by the water, kept me awake or very lightly dozing for the second half of the night. Hopefully, I will adjust to that quickly. My cabin is below the water line, so I will have to adjust to it.
On board life is very much like being in a hotel. The Captain said as much in his talk the night before and the staff ratio reflects that (10 nautical crew and 45 hotel staff). Breakfast in the restaurant was giving very ‘hotel buffet’ vibes. I chose something from the a la carte menu to test the kitchen (eggs Benedict, of course) and was a little disappointed when served a single poached egg on a muffin (with all the necessary trimmings). Unsatisfied by this (delicious) morsel, I then hit the buffet like a champ. As far as these sorts of things go, it’s very good.
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| Scenes of Rotterdam from breakfast | ||
After breakfast, I headed up to the Lounge to work on the blog while sipping coffee and watching the Rhine flow by. The blog entry wasn’t very long (as you may know) so I managed to get it all written and posted just in time for mustering for the walking tour that I’d signed on for at Kinderdijk. The tour was a walk from the boat out to the UNESCO heritage water-pumping windmills at Kinderdijk.
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There were three different variations of the tour to the windmills (canal boat, e-bike, and walking) and consequently something like seven groups to coordinate. Sam, the Program Director (a lovely young British man), was very good at what he did but he was working with some unruly, untrained, excited tourists, so it required quite a lot of marshalling to get everyone off the boat in an orderly fashion and into the care of their respective guides. I hope for his sake that the passengers learn how to be more compliant and listen to instructions better to make this sort of thing simpler. It’s not hard, just that people don’t seem to listen to directions, and then can’t work out the simple matters for themselves either.
My group (50 D) was led by volunteer Gert, who turned out to be a local man, “nearly 70”, he said, who was an excellent guide with a strong command of English and a well-developed patios focused on making things relevant for American tourists. He definitely made the tour interesting and enjoyable. He led us across the kinderdijk (explaining that it literally meant ‘child’s’ dike, or ‘small’ dike) down to the entry into the UNESCO area. The bridge that we crossed to get to the smaller water-management dikes and the restaurant across the canal were new additions that had required considerable debate to install in this area that is otherwise under preservation orders and cannot be changed, at all.
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| Note that all these pumps use Archimedean screws to raise the water to the level needed. You can see the modern ones under the light-coloured building. | ||
Gert recounted the broad history of the place, including the legend of a child, Beatrice, a miller’s daughter (windmill operators in the Netherlands are called ‘moellen’ – millers – or ‘wind wards’) who was caught by a flood through the area while the miller was distracted trying to save the windmill. Beatrice only survived, according to the legend, because the miller’s cat jumped onto the baby’s cradle and, being averse to getting wet, kept it upright while it floated away down stream, until it finally pitched up against the grating in the canal drain and both could be rescued. Gert said that this story is sometimes used as the explanation of why it’s called kinderdijk. But that’s wrong, he said in a typically Dutch way.
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We walked along the main spine of the water mill channel to Watermill #2. Gert explained that they do not have names. The Dutch are all about efficiency, so the windmills are simply numbered, he said. None of the windmills are now required to manage the water levels behind the kinderdijk but the one we are visiting and (at least) one other are open for tourism. They are ‘preserved’ in the style that they were occupied when they were operated as the water management system (last back in the early 1900s, if I’ve remembered the details correctly). While the windmill is an impressive structure in itself, it’s not very big to inspect.
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Gert explained that being a wind ward is (basically) a hereditary role. One must learn to be a miller and the only way to do that was in a mill. Only the wind wards and their families may live in the windmills (these days, they rent them from the UNESCO heritage foundation that owns the whole district). So, while outsiders could conceivably become millers by living with a miller family, most of the time it’s one (or more) of their children who learn the ropes (literally), pass the exam to qualify, and then take on one of the mills. Gert noted that the last family to live in the mill we were visiting had 12 children! While we were touring the windmill, we met a young woman, Mandy, who was being interviewed by the local press, because she was about to sit her exam as a miller (actually, as a mill wright, I found out later). Mandy told me that she was 8th generation miller on both her family sides, and her boyfriend (also studying to be a miller) was 11th generation.
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We returned to the Sigrun after the tour and the rest of the day was spent cruising up the Rhine. This is a very satisfactory thing for me. My previous (first) river cruise experience (the Nile in 2012) had been disappointing on one aspect, that I didn’t actually get to experience cruising. On that cruise we would just wake up docked at our next port and spend the day sight-seeing. This cruise has a couple of sections where we get to experience the actual cruising. I spent a bit of time finalising the blog entry in the lounge beside a window and it was pretty ideal.
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This afternoon’s program included another talk from the Captain, who is a charming Dutchman, just a year younger than me. He explained that he is a ‘skipper’s child’ – the child of a river-faring ship captain. That meant that he and his siblings didn’t grow up in a home like other people do. They were raised on their family’s ship, then sent to boarding school from 6 to 16, and then came back to work with their family on a ship. Eventually (when he was 22), he had attained his captain’s ticket and acquired his own ship.
After his very interesting talk about river life and a video presentation on how the Sigrun and its siblings operate (through which a fair proportion of his audience slept!) I was scheduled to do a wheelhouse visit. Having seen the video presentation, there was less motivation to see the wheelhouse itself, but I went to be sure that I’d visited all of the ship. It turns out, while I was there, the weather was essentially perfect, so the cruising experience was amplified.
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The evening program included another all-passengers get-together for welcome drinks and chats from the main functionaries. In the photo, you can see that there are some passengers who are bringing the average age down a bit. Of course, I’m now wondering what their story is; why go on an expensive cruise together at that age (versus other tour alternatives)? We were passing habitation while sitting at dinner, so I tried to capture the atmosphere.
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| Daily facts: Location: [R]hine River (Kinderdijk), the Netherlands Temp: 11-13 Weather: Overcast, some rain, and some sun |
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