Curious Traveler

- Tulips, wooden clogs and windmills.

Where else could we be, but the Netherlands.

And today we are taking you all across this beautiful country to get curious about its most treasured spots and beautiful pieces of architecture that all have a UNESCO status.

(gentle music) Curious Traveler is made possible by the following... (upbeat music) (uplifting music) During World War II, an organization was formed to help protect the historic monuments, the art, and the cultures that were rapidly being destroyed.

That organization was called UNESCO or the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Today, as we know, UNESCO continues to protect world heritage sites worldwide.

And here in the Netherlands, they are proud to have 12 of those world heritage sites.

And today, we're taking you to get curious about just a few of them.

From treasured pieces of Dutch architecture built to help the poor to those iconic Dutch windmills.

That's right, this journey across the beautiful Netherlands is a specific one, to visit four of its 12 UNESCO sites.

First we go to South Holland and Kinderdijk for those iconic windmills.

Then up to Frederiksoord for the Colonies of Benevolence, then to Rotterdam for the Van Nelle Factory, and finally to North Holland for the Beemster Polder.

So here's what I'm curious about in the Netherlands.

Who decided to drain a lake to build a town?

What is a bed stay?

Where is the largest concentration of old windmills in the world?

Why is there so much glass on this factory?

When could you live for free in this beautiful village?

And how did these marvelous inventions save a nation?

Who, what, where, why, when, and how?

So much to be curious about in the Netherlands UNESCO sites.

Our journey begins with the icon of the Netherlands, the windmill.

And where better to explore the importance of the windmill than here at Kinderdijk A testament to Dutch ingenuity and perseverance to make uninhabitable lands habitable.

Because in the early 13th century, this huge area you see today was one giant swamp.

To tell us more is Edo Anceaux with the Kinderdijk World Heritage Foundation.

So how did it all start?

Because people don't normally live on water.

(chuckles) - Exactly, below water, actually.

- Below water.

How did it all happen?

- Yeah, well, the Romans, before the Dutch came here, the Romans said like, don't go there because it's a swamp.

It's just wetland, you can't live there.

And then the Dutch came in and they were a little bit more stubborn.

- Stubborn can be good, stubborn can be a good thing.

- Yeah, in this case it was because they dried the land.

This started about a thousand years ago.

So they duct the canals like the one that we see over here.

And then this drains the water from the soil, and it goes into the canal that we duct.

- And this system of draining marshy lands happened all over the Netherlands as far back as the 8th century.

While it may seem crazy to go around draining lakes to live on, the Dutch had to protect themselves from flooding.

They also had to create new farmland for food and to create new land for their country.

In fact, to this day, about 20% of the Netherlands is on reclaimed land and below sea level.

And all this water management is what the Dutch do best.

In fact, there is a quote that says God made the earth, but the Dutch made Holland.

The name Kinderdijk, as with all good UNESCO sites or all good historical sites, there's a wonderful legend or two, or three.

Tell us the legend of why we think or possibly why it's called Kinderdijk.

- So there's three stories here.

One of them is not that fun, actually, they say that it was built by children.

I don't believe that at all.

- Yeah, that doesn't sound very fun.

- No, the other one is that it's just a small dike, So that's why they call it the children's dike.

And the last one is very romantic.

There was a big flood and then in the end, there was a cradle, like after it all happened, there was a cradle arriving here at Kinderdijk with a kid in it, and there was a cat on the cradle keeping it in balance.

And they thought that was so beautiful that they called it the children's dike.

- Oh, I like that one.

I'm gonna go with that one.

- Stick to that one.

- We're gonna stick with that one.

Such incredible history.

Wouldn't it be amazing to get to live here?

Too late, somebody already does.

What I find interesting, what a lot of people might find interesting is that people still live inside these today?

- That's right.

- Who gets to live inside these pieces of history?

- Well, you need to be a certified miller.

So you need to do a training of at least two years.

Yeah, you can do it.

Anybody can do that, they can get their certificate and then you need to apply.

So these are people that really love their history, and they are very good at milling.

Some of them have lived here for many generations.

There is one family called Family Hook.

And they are training the 11th generation of their family to become a miller.

- Really?

- Yeah.

And the youngest is 19 years old.

And he actually, last week he got his certificate.

So we're very proud of this new generation.

I hope that family appreciates that because think about how many families, you know, we know where it's like, I'm not gonna do what dad did, I'm gonna do my own thing.

That's 11 generations.

- Yeah.

- That's fantastic.

But there's a catch to making a windmill your home, you really have to know how things work around here.

So we mosey a little closer to examine the inner workings of these Dutch treasures.

How does all of it work?

- Well, you need this wheel, of course.

- This wheel, kind of an important part of it.

- Because this rotates the cap of the windmill.

Because the roof can rotate towards the wind because the wings of the windmill need to face the wind.

- No matter what.

- Yeah.

And then it starts turning of course.

And there's all these gears inside which lock into each other.

And then eventually lock into the water wheel, which we have over here.

- Get a closer look there.

And you can actually hear, it's so nice.

So you hear the wind whipping around, but you can also hear the water being dug up.

- Yeah, so now very slowly, it's scooping up the water.

And it goes up- - That is so big, I can't even...

It looks like a ferry boat.

It's huge, a paddle boat.

- Yeah, it's a bit similar to that actually.

- It's ginormous.

- And if you take a close look, you can see that the water on our right side is much lower than on the left side because it's pumping it up there.

- Oh, it is?

- So that's just like one and a half meters up over there into that river.

- So has this been doing this ever since it was built?

I mean, honestly, just as long as the wind's been going, this has been performing the same function the whole time?

- Exactly, yeah.

- That's incredible.

- We keep renovating it, of course because these are monuments.

- Right, but it's the same concept, and you know?

- And you see now that the wind is picking up, so it goes a bit faster, you can see the water over here as well.

- I do, and everyone's gonna see what I'm wincing at in just a second here.

So we're getting very close to the main event.

The big show.

Oh my goodness.

Okay, so you can hear it.

- Are you okay passing?

- I'm fine, thank you.

- We have the fences.

- I'm fine, thank you.

Oh my gosh, I feel like I'm too near, like the blades of something.

How fast are they going?

And you can see how big they are when it's fast.

- Well, they're going very fast.

- My goodness.

- They can go up to 70 miles an hour, so.

- They're 70 miles an hour.

- Yeah, it will sound like an airplane taking off.

- It really does.

Just listen to that, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

Standing this close and feeling the power of the windmill really makes you appreciate how those Dutch pioneers and engineers were able to build the dry land that we're standing on.

Okay, so the last thing I have to make sure of, these aren't just going to be set free and fly off.

They're securely fastened.

- They're very secure, yeah.

- It's incredible, and I can't stop saying it.

It's just, being this close, they are so huge.

And it's incredible they were built like this all these centuries ago.

- 300 years ago, it's amazing, right?

- It's incredible.

Before we leave, powerful and beautiful Kinderdijk, there is one more curiosity I want to show you.

How to talk to your neighbor if you live in a windmill?

Now it is said that anybody who would live in a windmill is probably pretty introverted, but every once in a while, a windmill resident may wanna communicate with his or her neighbor.

And the way that they do that is they put the brakes on the wings and put 'em in a certain position to communicate certain things.

So if the windmills are forced like this, it means one thing, but if it's frozen like this, it means something else altogether.

And for this one behind me, when it is also decorated with all these flags, that means that the person inside is getting married.

So this is a wedding announcement, Holland style.

How curious.

(gentle music) Next we go from the windmills, a symbol of Dutch perseverance to a utopian farm village, a symbol of Dutch charity and hope.

In the early 19th century, portions of the Netherlands were completely devastated by the Napoleonic wars and a bad harvest.

So a plan was put into place to help out the hundreds of families, homeless people, and orphans.

Huge tracks of land were set aside for new farms, new homes, new schools like this one behind me and new churches.

Together, these new communities were called the Colonies of Benevolence.

Today, the Colonies of Benevolence have a UNESCO status, and there were originally about 430 of these colony homes.

Today, luckily there are at least 50 left.

But the more important legacy is that millions of Dutch people today can trace their ancestry back to these original colony residence.

At its height, there were seven Colonies of Benevolences across the kingdom of the Netherlands, which is in today's Netherlands and Belgium.

Here, hundreds of poor people lived in cute little houses, worked on cute little farms, and went to cute little schools, all for free.

It was all part of an 1817 social experiment led by a Dutch governor general named Johannes van den Bosch.

The idea followed the enlightenment principles of the time, of helping the poor to help themselves.

Some have called this experiment in early form of welfare.

The main colony was this one called Frederiksoord after Prince Frederick, a Patron of the Colonies.

So in 1818, 52 families were transplanted from the big cities to out here, into the farmlands of Frederiksoord all in the hopes of building new agrarian communities and to nurture the quote, "ideal citizen."

And as you can see, this utopian concept was designed along beautiful little straight tree-lined roads with community centers, churches, their own currency and the social experiment that was the Colonies of Benevolence even had its own healthcare system.

By 1827, every resident paid one penny per family member per week into the healthcare plan.

This gave them any doctor's visits or medications that they might need.

And this beautiful house behind me that belonged to the doctor.

So I'm guessing some of those pennies went to him.

The aged of the community were taken care of as well.

It was first though, the responsibility of the adult children of the household to take care of their aging parents.

In fact, they were obliged to do so if they wanted to remain in their homes.

But let's say there was a senior citizen who didn't have any children.

He or she was taken care of too, in one of the two rest homes that are here.

And these rest homes, which took care of the aged with a first of their kind in all of the Netherlands.

Free homes, free schools, healthcare, a retirement home, all set within this idyllic countryside.

It all sounds pretty good, right?

But there was a catch.

These adorable fetched cottages, I will take either one of them, by the way, thank you very much.

Are typical of the types of homes that were given to the poor families in the early days of the colony.

The idea was that if you gave a beautiful home like this to a poor family, they would take pride in it and then take pride in themselves, and then take pride in their community, which led to a better life for everyone.

And often these families were also given free farmland and free farm tools.

But all of this perceived utopia came at a price because those families were expected to work hard.

The children were expected to work and to go to school.

And many rules and regulations were imposed upon any family that was living here.

One of the most extreme rules was that if a family did not have enough children, they were forced to take in orphans to raise as their own.

And on top of that, every family had to have a supervisor that would come and check on them at least every other day.

And for these two homes, at least, that supervisor lived right across the street.

This brings us to the criticisms of the program.

Some of the colonies were free colonies, where in theory, families lived freely, but other colonies were considered unfree, where criminals or the homeless were forced to live in a colony and forced to do manual labor on the farms.

In some cases, families or individuals were kicked out of their homes and the colony if they didn't follow the rules.

And ultimately, the farms themselves did not prove to be profitable.

But back to the positive side, the Colonies of Benevolence are a source of pride for the Dutch, because of its early healthcare system, the establishment of vocational schools and a public school system.

Whether good or bad, at its peak in the 19th century, 18,000 people lived here in the colonies.

By the 20th century, the colonies became regular neighborhoods.

And at Frederiksoord, there's now a wonderful museum at its center where you can visit and experience what life was like in this unique social experiment.

Our next UNESCO site is in Rotterdam and has ziggy-zaggy diagonal pathways, curvy swirly machinery, and windows, windows, windows.

Is this a 1950s sci-fi set?

A giant glorious greenhouse?

Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory?

Well, it is a factory, but they didn't make chocolate here.

This is the Van Nelle Factory, built in the 1920s and 1930s, and designed to be the ideal factory.

It was given its UNESCO status because as you can see, it is an icon of 20th century industrial architecture.

Full of ingenious innovations, gadgets and gizmos.

They really thought of everything here at the factory.

Every little innovation and every little ingenious invention you can still see today.

The first one I love, if you look through the windows here, of course, we have thousands and thousands of windows and they needed to be cleaned.

So the solution was they put a railing up at the top and wrapped it all the way around the factory.

And that is actually a railway line.

And then the window cleaners would hang off of that and do lots of window cleaning throughout the day.

The next thing I really love might just look like a regular old staircase, but there's a fun story that goes along with it.

If you think back to the 1910s and 1920s, it's kind of hard to fathom today, but not every family had a shower or a bathtub inside their home.

But here at the factory, hygiene was a priority because of course, the workers were putting their hands into the tea and the coffee.

So the solution was, they would provide shower and bathing services, and facilities here at the factory.

But you had to have one side for the ladies and one side for the gentleman.

And it wasn't enough to just have the shower and bathing facilities separate, the staircases were separate too.

So this was the lady side, and that was the side for the gentleman, I'll stay on my side, you stay on yours.

Once the workers were nice and clean, they went to work on one of the three main buildings, one for each of the three products made here.

To tell us all about this unique Dutch icon is Frank Belderbos.

- This factory was full and used for making tobacco, tea, and coffee.

- The three vices add some chocolate, and we're good to go.

It all starts in the 18th century when the Van Nelle family opens a small shop in Rotterdam selling that coffee, tea, and tobacco.

Then in the 19th century, the van der Leeuw, family takes over the Van Nelle company.

And by 1920, Cees van der Leeuw is in charge of the booming business and has a great idea.

- Cees van der Leeuw wanted to create a daylight factory, where workers had the good conditions to do their work and where daylight could come on every workplace in the factory.

- Cees van der Leeuw, and the architects took inspiration from Henry Ford's automobile factories, and then put their own Dutch modernism spin on things, including the most striking feature of the factory, the curtain wall.

One of the most outstanding features of the factory, these walls that are almost completely glass, almost completely all windows at the time were other factories completely shut off and maybe one window or no windows.

How different was this at the time?

- This was very new, which was created here, especially in the scale, this factory was realized.

The buildings were kind of narrow, so the daylight could come on every place working place in the factory.

- So how to let in all that light without the building falling down, something called the mushroom pillar.

- The mushroom pillars were port all at once with the same floor.

They didn't need concrete beams, so they gained about 50 centimeter extra light to come into the working space.

- And a workplace filled with light was just the beginning.

Of the many innovative designs here were these covered walkways so that workers could move quickly from building to building.

These diagonal passages were not for sliding from one building to the next.

Believe me, I asked.

But they were used with conveyor belts for the products to get from one building to the next.

And at the very top was this beautiful art deco tea room, reserved only for the big bosses, but it played an important role in the next phase of the factory's history.

The design of this factory then go on to influence other factories, other buildings?

- Yes, of course, in the scale they built, this was an industrial facility.

It was a good example of how you could create new buildings and new houses.

And for example, Rotterdam was bombarded in the second World War, and the whole city center was destroyed.

And for the reconstruction of the city center, they used the IDs of modernism to rebuild the whole cities.

- In fact, those designers in charge of rebuilding Rotterdam from the rubble of World War II stood here on the rooftop of the factory to look out over the destruction and build anew.

(uplifting music) Our final UNESCO site is a collection of small villages with lovely little homes, farmhouses, a big, beautiful church, and lots of perfectly straight roads and straight canals, creating little straight rectangles of lands.

Seems like the perfect place to live, right?

Except, we really shouldn't be able to stand where we're standing right now, we should actually be in a lake.

This is Danielle Woudstra, the Visit Beemster store chairperson.

She loves sharing the beauty of her hometown along with the history of this unique place to live.

It all started around the year 1612 when there was a need for new farmland and new homes for the Dutch people.

- In Amsterdam, the inhabitants were growing, so they needed extra lands for the people, and they needed food, so decided to make this lake dry.

- But here's the thing, Lake Beemster happened to be 28 square miles big, no problem.

I'll have it done for you in a week.

Seriously, how do you drain something that large?

Well, as we've learned for the Dutch, this is no problem.

This is what they do.

So how did they actually do it?

Did they use the windmills?

Did they use the, what is it, the Archimedes screw?

How in the world did they take a lake and turn it into this beautiful town that we see?

- Yeah, they build a can canal around it, and with the grounds of the canal, they made the dike.

And on the dike they put the, in total 50 windmills.

And it was done well in a very quick period of time, around five years, there was some big storm, then the dike collapsed.

So they had to redo it all- - Redo it all again.

Almost again, but in 1612, it was finished and then the land was reclaimed and they can start building houses on it.

- And here's what's curious.

1612 was of course during the Renaissance.

So when the plots of lands for the houses were designed, the planners used the principles of classical geometry using what was considered to be the ideal ratio of 2 to 3.

So that is why to this day, every single yard is in the shape of a perfect rectangle with a ratio of 2 to 3.

In fact, the more you look around, the more you will notice that the entire grid plan and the entire shape of Beemster is just as it was when it was first built in the early 17th century.

Even though so much has changed over the past 400 years, we can still see the basic grid plans still here today.

Like this canal was one of the original ones.

- Yes so when you look at the drawing that was made to reclaim this land, you can still see it.

And when new things are built, they really look at the structure and they say, okay, you can build over there and there, but the canals and the ways they must, well stay there.

- Who knew that geometry could be so pretty?

And something else that hasn't changed much over the centuries is the classic Dutch farmhouse called a bell jar farmhouse, because its pyramid roof is kind of shaped like a bell jar.

So let's take a peek inside, because honestly, I could really use a nap.

This is the inside of an 1877 farmhouse.

That was pretty typical for the Beemster area.

It is absolutely magnificent.

Lots of great details to show you.

The first one I wanna show you right off the bat, if you look on the chart here, and it looks like it says NAP, that actually stands for sea level.

So that is another reminder that we are about three meters below sea level.

I'm telling you, those Dutch engineers were amazing.

And now look up and you can see the inside of that bell jar rooftop so tall, because it was used for hay storage.

Surrounding the hay loft were the stalls for the cows and that took up most of the room of the farmhouse.

So where did the humans live?

So if this was the kitchen and the dining room, where would their bedrooms be?

Oh, I have an idea.

Maybe up here, It'll lead to some stairs, we'll see some bedrooms.

Wait!

Creepy doll, hello!

This is called a bed stay.

And it is not unique to Beemster, and it's not unique to this farmhouse.

You'll see them all over the Netherlands and actually in Europe as well, and especially in those windmills.

Now I have to show you, so even though this looks small, this is where mom and dad would sleep.

This is where Junior would sleep in a little kind of shelf there, a little drawer.

And junior number two or Juniorette would sleep up here.

So, oh, and one last thing.

No, this is not a bed pan.

They would actually put coals in here and then kind of put that at the foot of the bed before they had hot water bottles to keep everybody warm.

Okay, this is not true to the time period, but I'm gonna give it a whirl and snuggle over here.

See how it goes, see how comfy it is?

All right, creepy doll, you're gonna have to move.

I'm gonna in.

Oh my God!

(chuckles) For the first time in my life, being short is a good thing.

All right, I gotta close her up, time for a nap.

Night, night.

Somebody should really nominate the bed stay for its own UNESCO status.

It's very snugly in here.

So from a lofty, spinny, magical invention with some seriously fast wings...

They're securely fastened.

- Very secure.

- That made uninhabitable lands a beautiful home and a powerful nation with some curious symbols to a flower filled utopia that was a pretty program for the poor to a sparkly, light-filled solution to workers' woes, to a picture perfect village, built at the bottom of a lake with some cozy sleeping arrangements.

Time for nap.

The Netherlands UNESCO sites have so much to be curious about.

Thank you for joining us on our educational journey.

And hopefully now, you're even more curious about the who, what, where, why, when, and how's of the Netherlands UNESCO sites, as they say here, (speaking in foreign language) (upbeat music) Curious traveler is made possible by the following... (uplifting music) Still curious?

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