Alkmaar & Texel



 

We had some time before school started so we took a long weekend trip to Texel (pronounced Tessel) which is the westernmost of a string of islands that band the northern coast of Holland.  It's about 20 miles long and 5 miles wide.  It's west coast is an unbroken stretch of sandy beach on the North Sea.  The east coast borders the Waddenzee (Wad is a Dutch word for mud flats). 

On the way we stopped at the town of Alkmaar, famous for its cheese heritage.  The land surrounding Alkmaar is flat, soggy and unsuitable for crops.  But it's fine for raising cows and the Alkmaarians have been making cheese here since the 1300's.  The town was granted exclusive rights to weigh the cheese for the region (there must have been some serious lobbying) and grew prosperous from the taxes collected. 

The Waag, or Weighing House. When you've got a monopoly on weighing, you can afford a beautiful building.

A cheese press is used to press the whey out of the cheese and give it shape. It was an important piece of eqiupment so they were often given as wedding presents. That also explains why some were so fancy, such as the one shown here.

One of the early Miele appliances -- this one is a butter churn.

With all that history, it is no surprise that Alkmaar has a cheese museum.  It's actually quite interesting.  And it hosts a traditional cheese market every Friday, which was the day we visited.  The cheese market merits two different reviews from separate guidebooks.  One calls it "popular and well worth the trip".  The other calls it an "ancient affair that these days ranks as one of the most extravagant tourist spectacles in North Holland".  There is truth in both statements.  It is certainly popular.  The trip is only an hour, so it was worth it.  And spectacle is an appropriate description as well.

The market depicts how cheese markets operated in the 1700's.  Large wheels of cheese line the market square.  Buyers inspect the cheese by boring out a long round piece.  Then the buyer and seller negotiate with a series of hand slaps, much like a variety of high fives, low fives, head fakes, etc.  Although it would be interesting to know the origin of this "language", none was provided.  When the deal is concluded a team from the Cheese Porters Guild (i.e. transportation union) carries the cheese on an ornamental trays to be weighed.   It was all very lively and it certainly drew a crowd. 

Looking down on the cheese market.  Lots of people line the sides.  Some of the cheese is covered due to rain. 

 

A Cheese Porters Guild team carries away the cheese to be weighed.

This is the Red Team (there are four different guilds).  The men kind of trot as they carry the cheese. 

 

These guys are tossing the cheese to load the tray. They never hand it to each other; it's always tossed.



As you can probably guess, Hond is the Dutch word for dog.  I don't think we'd trust Graber pulling a cart of milk; there would be a lot of crying. 

An interesting home in Alkmaar

We decided to take this street back to our car because the flowers looked so nice.  Little did we realize that about half way down the street it became the red light district, which in Holland is a very public business. 

From Alkmaar we finished our drive up to Texel.  Since this was a Friday afternoon in August there were several thousand other Nederlanders doing the same thing, so traffic was a bit heavy.  We finally made it onto the ferry and scooted across to Texel.  We did everything you would expect to do on a vacation island -- played three rounds of golf on the par 3 course, rode horses, rode bicycles, visited the sea life center, walked the beach and toured the lighthouse.  The one thing we didn't do was sky dive, even though it seemed like everyone else on the island did.  The planes were dropping sky divers all day long. 

It's only about a 15 minute ferry ride to Texel, which seems short compared to the 90 minute wait to get on the ferry.

I took several pictures of gulls following our ferry. This one was about the only interesting shot.

The leader is in the bottom left of the photo.  As you can see, due to my lack of horse riding skills I'm paying close attention to her instructions. 

Grant thanks his horse, Werner. 

We visited a working cheese farm.  If you look closely you'll see a cow in this automatic milking machine.  The Dutch title for this was "Milkrobot". 

This is a true Dutch cheese maker.  He was about 7 feet tall.  Here he has taken the cheese out of the mold and is shaping it. 

The linksters

Fore!

Changing houses at one of the beaches

At the Sea Life Center, feeding time was very popular. 

After lunch, this guy sacked out in the sun. 

 

Good think for digital cameras -- you end up taking 50 shots of the seals. When you review them later, most of them are just seals playing in the water.

How many flounders can you see in this picture?

The dunes between the beach and the farmland. 

 

View of the beach from the lighthouse.  It was low tide. 

The lighthouse was actually a lighthouse within a lighthouse.  The first one was partially destroyed when some POW's revolted against the Nazi's in WWII.  The Nazi's opened up with full fire to quell the uprising, which unfortunately severely damaged the lighthouse.  After the war, a new lighthouse was built around the old one.  Here are some bullet holes on the old lighthouse wall. 

Grant and Lori trying to build sand stuff with very dry sand. 

Every barn on the island was built in this style.  The sloped roof faces the prevailing wind (which I'm sure can be quite strong coming in off the North Sea).  The large doors are on the left face where they are protected from the wind.