LONG LIVE THE WINDMILL!

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Saturday and Sunday, 9-10 May 2009 were the Windmill Days in the Netherlands. I was always enthusiast about windmills. Somewhow it offers me a feeling about tratidion, history and something typical Dutch. My family and I biked to Abcoude to the first windmill but it was closed due to restoration. Then we went to Weesp and visited one of the windmill in Utrechtsestraat. The windmill is called "De Vriendschap" (The Friendship) built in 1694. It is still active with flour production using wind as the power generator. For me it was impressive to see the interior of the windmill during the flour production and to listen to stories that windmill can be used for various function that needs huge power. I think it is smart to take benefit of the wind since Holland is windy most of the time of the year.



Public, especially children and foreign tourists, visited the Friendship windmill last Saturday. It was nice to see how young generation learn about the windmill. They could eat "pannekoek" (pancake), went up to the plaza of the windmill and played around the windmill with a view of the river. Fabulous.


Other special thing was the exhibition about "Traditions of Holland" which use t-shirts as its medium. Every t-shirt shows one subject like "Monday is the washing day," "Mother Day," "Santa Claus," etc. This exhibition is related to the theme 2009 as the Year of Traditions initiated by the Netherlands Centre for Folks Culture in Utrecht. They have decided that traditions become more important in the periods of globalization and multicultural society, because they remind all of us about habits and customes that we learn from home. T-shirt materials can be borrowed by any organizations in the country. These white t-shirts are supposed to be shown as washing hanging with cloth's clips outside. This is as a metaphore of tradition : it is public, can be seen by everyone although it has something personal, intimite, just like traditions.

The benefit of exhibition with washed t-shirts is they can be hanged everywhere, inside museums, schools, libraries, but also in the middle of a market, street or garden.

Second thought of using the metaphore of washed -t-shirts is tradition is just like clothes. When it is out of fashion or too old, it dismiss from our daily life. Tradition is dynamic and change all the time. It can re-appears if it is fashionable again.

For someone who had an obligation to go to the "Inburgering cursus" (Integration course) and learned all about Dutch life in term of language and traditions, I found this kind of exhibition was very interesting, informative and creative.

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