Windmills and Wooden Shoes

by Blair Jaekel

The market at Arnhem, at the side of the Groote Kerk, a weekly event that overflows into the neighboring streets and interferes with the trolley service

The Velp Road, which leads at length to Zutphen, is, perhaps, the gem of all the five. Wide and well kept, it is lined on either side as far as the village of Velp, a distance of three miles from Arnhem, with handsome residences and tastefully laid out lawns and gardens which are girt with small canals in lieu of fences, so that each may be admired from the roadway.

Halfway along is Bronbeek, the royal asylum for invalid soldiers who have served in the colonial wars. It was bought by King William III in 1854 from its private owners, and presented by him to the State five years later on condition that it be devoted to its present purpose. Little cascades trickle here and there through its grounds, while the pair of cannon mounted on its front lawn bespeaks its use as no blaring signboard could possibly do. Not far from the corner entrance to its park stands a statue of William II as Crown Prince, portrayed as carrying his arm in a sling after having received a wound in the battle of Waterloo. The interior of the building contains collections of portraits of East Indian heroes, and of weapons, flags, and other trophies of war taken in the colonies.

Rosendaal, one of the largest estates in Gelderland, can be reached after a pleasant walk of a mile in a northerly direction from Velp. Mentioned for the first time as early as 1314, its grounds are still kept in a state of baronial magnificence, but of its old castle only a comparatively small part of a great round tower remains.

Another walk, but toward the east on the road to the village and wood of Beekhuizen, brings you to the castle of Biljoen, erected by Charles, Duke of Guelders, in 1530, upon the foundations of an eleventh century stronghold.

Nymwegen may be considered the twin city of Arnhem; when one is mentioned the other is instinctively thought of. They lie close to each other, are of about the same population, offer the same general aspects, and have played parts of equal importance in the general history of the country; but of the two, Nymwegen is possibly the more diverting. It is two cities in one—the older part being purely Dutch, with its old Dutch buildings and a few Dutch types which are mocked by the declivity of some of its streets; the more modern and larger part being distinctively German, with its platzes, the general distribution and embellishment of its thoroughfares, and the density of its greenery. The center of this German portion of Nymwegen is the Keiser-Karelplein, a beautiful square from which the different streets radiate; but what should be the pleasing quiet of the neighborhood is constantly and mercilessly broken by the shrieks of the engine of a noisy tram train that rattles around among the trees as if hunting in vain for a convenient exit.

Yet another example of the very esthetic habit that the Dutch have of demolishing old fortifications and planting the sites as public pleasure grounds may be seen in the Kronenburg Park, the contour of whose slopes adds admirably to the general landscape effect. Down at the bottom is a duck-dotted lake bordered with the benches that constitute the trysting places of many a young Nymwegen couple, so unconscious of any but their own affairs that they suffer old ladies to sit upon the same bench and knit and spy with generous eyes upon the lovers’ advances. At the farther edge of the lake they have mercifully preserved one of the sixteen towers that once strengthened the town walls.

The Waal, one of the many branches of the Rhine, is a busier river at Nymwegen than the real Rhine is at Arnhem. Tows of long, narrow boats, typical of the Rhine above Cologne, ply up and down under the great iron railway bridge and lend to the city more of a German air than ever.

Overlooking the river some distance above the railway bridge are the shady pleasure grounds of the Valkhof, one of the seven hills upon which the city of Nymwegen was originally built and where Charlemagne erected an imperial palace, later destroyed by the French in 1796. An interesting and picturesque ruin is a small fragment of the old palace church, built by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, while near by may be seen the oldest remnant of ecclesiastical architecture in the Netherlands—the sixteen-sided Gothic castle chapel, rebuilt a number of times after being consecrated originally by Pope Leo III in 799.