Windmills and Wooden Shoes

by Blair Jaekel

To-day Zutphen is a quiet old city, very un-Dutch, if the expression may be permitted, with many narrow, crooked streets and a few canals of varying degrees of picturesqueness on its outskirts. Lumber is the principal industry of the place, and a great deal of poplar wood which goes to supply the wooden shoes for many parts of Holland is shipped from Zutphen.

Arnhem on the Rhine is the most thriving town as well as the capital of Gelderland. It is essentially an ancient place, dating back to a remote period in the history of the Netherlands; even some there be who give Arnhem the credit of being the original Arenacum of the Romans. It lies upon the southern slopes of the Veluwe district, and from its railway station the visitor will actually have to go down hill into the town—a topographical condition so foreign to any of the other Dutch cities already visited that Arnhem’s allegiance to Holland is questioned at first sight.

Although Arnhem is old, it lacks many of those gifts of age that one sees in other old cities throughout the country. Its appearance is German, but its people, realizing the monetary benefits that rival Dutch municipalities are deriving annually from the hordes of tourists that descend upon them, try to advertise it as typically Dutch, and issue frantic appeals to the traveler to be sure to pay it a visit on these grounds. With its 60,000 inhabitants it is the sixth city in point of population in Holland. Although it enjoys every advantage of transportation its commerce is pitiable; as a residence city, however, it is particularly favored. Because of the attractions of its environs, Arnhem is a favorite spot for the retired Dutch merchant, who, having amassed a fortune in the colonial trade after a long residence in the remote Straits Settlements, seeks some quiet place at home endowed with the beauties of nature, in which to spend the remainder of his days in comfort.

The oldest part of Arnhem is the southern end of the city, bordering on the Rhine and clustering about the Groote Markt as a center. The Groote Kerk, an ecclesiastical building of large parts and deep excavations, containing numerous monuments in memory of various historical celebrities, bounds the market square on the west, and on the south one may pierce the surrounding buildings to the Eusibius Square and the Rhine bank through the ancient Sabil-Poort, a Gothic gateway recalling the days when Arnhem was fortified with the customary town wall.

At the side of the Groote Kerk Arnhem holds a weekly market which is scarcely more distinctive than that of Groningen but so popular with the peasants that it overflows into the neighboring streets, and places trolley service through the vicinity in a state of disruption. Having driven into town the evening before, the country people unhitch their horses and leave their wagons standing in the square so as to lose no time in getting ready for business in the morning. Much faith they must have in the honesty and orderliness of the citizens of Arnhem, for their loads of vegetables and whatever they have for sale remain in the open, when the weather is propitious, without even a covering.

A few blocks to the east of the market square lies the Eusibiusbinnensingel, a beautiful park-like place, but a mouthful to pronounce, with a lake in the center surrounded by great shade trees and geometrical flower plots. If you follow this to the northward, you will come, after a short walk, to the Velperplein, the pulse of Arnhem’s trolley traffic, the principal feature of which is a large building that goes under the poetical name of the Musis Sacrum, containing a restaurant and various halls for exhibitions. Here at the tables of the open air café the German tourists are wont to forgather for refreshment purposes, guarding the while their little ten-by-two-inch satchels, scarcely large enough to hold half a dozen cigars, as if they contained the entire wardrobe and family jewels of their owners.

In the Velperplein one may board an electric car for any part of the city and many of its suburbs. And it is best to patronize the trolley service of Arnhem whenever possible, because taxicabs, horse drawn or motor propelled, are not to be found in operation. The buccaneering cabbies of Arnhem, next of kin to the piratical baggage porters of Fiume, charge a goodly price to take you out upon a drive in the environs, and double the amount to bring you back, on the ground that your ignorance of their language, not considering their ignorance of yours, was the cause of a misinterpretation of directions. And the worst of this tourist bleeding system is that the hotel head porters connive with the cabbies.

On top of a real hill half a mile to the north of the railway station is Sonsbeek, a favorite rendezvous of the pleasure-seeking Arnhemers, thickly wooded, containing a small lake or two, and, of course, the inevitable café, while the ascent of a tower called the Belvedere is offered as a temptation only to those who expect to obtain a magnificent and inspiring view where only a mediocre one exists.

The Velperweg, the Amsterdamschestraatweg—but if this kind of thing goes on it might tangle my type into a knotted, inextricable mass; for purely mechanical reasons, therefore, I shall revert to an English version. The Velper Road, the Amsterdam Road, the Zyp Road, the Utrecht Road, and the Apeldoorn Road are the five principal arteries that tap the environs that have made Arnhem famous with the Dutchman. Each one penetrates imposing woods, the like of which the Hollander never saw before, but ruthlessly tramped almost threadbare by his frequent pilgrimages through them in search of a “panorama,” no matter how insignificant. At the different points where the foliage permits of a view of sometimes several miles across the wheat fields, fruit venders have set up their stands, the ground is littered with papers and the empty boxes discarded by many picnickers, and the importunate picture postcard man is seen in his element.