Typically Dutch scenery and a perfectly normal, every-day view to me. So normal I hardly even register it anymore.

This is Windmill Nr. 6 in Haastrecht—a small, cozy village nearby the village I grew up in and only a stone’s throw away from the edge of Gouda, where I currently live. It’s a so-called ‘bosom mill‘. Its function is to level water by pumping high water from one area (polder) to low water in another.

I snapped this shot as I walked around the premises of Bisdom van Vliet—a museum that appears to have no English website for me to link to—on one of the first beautiful spring days of the year (de dag die je wist dat zou komen). I had my camera dangling around my neck like a tourist at Piccadilly circus.

It wasn’t until I transferred photos from my camera to my pc that I noticed something unusual: the windmill has sails! Somehow it had been restored and it now has sails, something it didn’t have when I was growing up. Googled it and quickly learned the restoration took place in 2010. I’ll go hide in shame now.

Goes to show that it pays to walk around the place you grew up in and look at the views around you with the eye of a tourist now and then.

Afraid it’s genetic. He doesn’t notice sails on mills either, he just loves to run and climb.

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