Jip and Janneke as every foreign people have lots of stereotype about the Netherlands. On one hand they want to jump deeply into the Dutch culture to break down the typical prejudices but also try all kind of things that are called typical Dutch. For this reason in the last few weeks they had two trips. The first one was by the countryside to visit a tulips farm (ok, tulips are from Turkey, but in the Netherlands they are quite good at growing them), while the second was to Kinderdijk, to see the windmills.
Janneke has a housemate, Lolkje who is the daughter of a real Dutch tulip farmer.

The first impression is definitely the most important thing, and in that case it was very typical Dutch. As soon as they got out the car, they saw a little cute Dutch boy, with blond hair of course, toddling in his red wooden shoes…
On that day Jip and Janneke learnt a lot about the ‘tulip profession’. They knew that there were two kinds of tulip farmer. One who grows tulips for the flowers and the other one who grows them for the bulbs.
Lolkje’s father, Piet is the second type but of course he is very enthusiastic about the tulips in general.

The two curious visitors could see the pictures about hundreds of tulips and know which one is good to give to your lover and which one is for a funeral. Then they went to watch the thousands of bulbs in boxes and also learnt how they planted them with the help of this big net and how they cut the buds during early spring to give more nutriments to the bulbs which will then give flowers the next year...

They also knew what was the biggest enemy of the tulips. It's an illness that comes when the bulbs can’t dry out perfectly so they start to rot and infect the other bulbs after each other in the box. If you have good nose for it, like merchants who trade with tulips have, you can smell this illness even if there are only a few sick bulbs in a huge box.
So Jip and Janneke wish all the best for this nice family and lots of healthy, beautiful bulbs in the next years!

They went also to visit the windmills because after the wooden shoes and the tulips, they are the third famous things that everybody knows about the Netherlands (except the easy drugs).
This place named Kinderdijk is interesting not just because of the old, nice windmills but also the process how they use them to pump out the water from the fields what they want to use for something else. (But this part Jip can explain you more:)       
 
Up to Jip now.
Jip drove his truly Italian car thru the flat land, until Kinderdijk (GPS).
The place is pretty impressive if you see it from a techie point of view.
The river is actually HIGHER than the land around.
This is possible because the complex of windmills (in the past) and diesel pumps nowadays keep the land dry, by pushing the water to the river.
In the past it was just a pond, but industrious Dutch people were able to see in the future, and built this system to get more land to coltivate, and less mosquitos to kill.
Jokes apart, it's really impressive, and the people living there is surely proud of their work.
We got to talk with this man who still runs one of these old windmills, actively pulling the water UP with just the strenght of the wind.
Pretty impressive.... and you really feel the power of this invisible blow, whistling over the wings of the mill, torquing the internal mechanism (made of wood!!) which thru some axis rotate the underneath wheel that pull the water.
And then you stand out, and you see the massive ground that "contains" the river..yeah.. contains...! Hard to understand or picture out.. a river which is standing "over" the land and not "in".. but hey.. that's Holland!
The windmills in line give an impressive sightseeing, and the place is full of birds... very peacefull.

Janneke is here again. Just to add some girlish point of view I have to tell you about the colours of the windmills:) In the past most of them were black because people who lived in them were poor. They used black paint what wasn't really paint but more pitch. And if you could see a green windmill that meant that people in it had more money. The miller also said that in Leiden you could see red and yellow windmills as well which showed what kind of religion they had in the area. The red ones were catholic and the yellow ones were protestant.

It was also interesting to know that nowadays they have a lot of problems with the water inside of the windmills. Especially ones what are from stones can let the rain inside and that can demage the walls later. Some of the owners try to plant laureates or other kind of climbing plants what lead the water down and safe the walls against the rain.

Last week we also did "wadlopen" what is a very tipical Dutch thing as well but this is another story:)