More from Gouda, The Netherlands

Gouda has many claims to fame. One is that the famous Desiderius Erasmus grew up in the town. Born circa 1467, he lived with his brother and mother for many years. She died of the plague and the two sons moved back to Gouda to be with their father. A trail with signs show some of the places where he played and worshiped while in Gouda. There's even a canal named after him...or maybe it's just the bridge.

Erasmus Brug=Erasmus bridge?

Erasmus trail sign

Nearby is the gate to the Jewish cemetery in Gouda.

Jewish Cemetery Gate

The town is famous for the cheese named after it. The market square has a cheese market on Thursday mornings. We weren't there on a Thursday, but there are plenty of other cheese shops in town to get one's slice, wedge, or wheel. One that we visited had a ton of cheeses, from serious to silly.

A Gouda cheese shop

The serious

The silly

We had lunch at the Cafe Central, where I had a nice local beer and L made herself busy recreating the event on her place mat.

Luscious local brew (though Brand is a pretty generic name, if you ask me)

L draws while we wait for food

Us at lunch (future posts may be only pictures by L...)

We were sad to leave behind such good food and good cheeses. Goodbye, Gouda!

Kaaswaag, Gouda, The Netherlands

In the Northeast end of the Markt in Gouda is the Waag, a seventeenth-century building that was the cheese-weighing house and is now a museum dedicated to Dutch cheese.

Kaaswaag, Gouda

Back of the Kaaswaag

Just over the front door is a relief of cheese weighing in action. This sculpture is a copy of the original which is now stored inside, where it shows its signs of weathering.

Bas relief of cheese weighing

Original inside the museum

The ground floor of the building is a combination tourist center, shop, and a slice of the museum.

The shop

Cheese weighing and stained glass!

Cheese and a Dutch girl

Cheese press with L's cheesy smile

Visitors pay a modest fee to go upstairs for the rest of the museum. The friends who came with us were mistaken for relatives and we paid the family rate for everyone.

The first floor had exhibits about Gouda specifically and that's where the original bas relief is found.

Ye olde mappe of Gouda

Up another flight of stairs is the exhibit on cheese making, which includes a video in Dutch with English subtitles. J and L loved watching the video which let us examine the cheese-making items in the room.

Standard cheese-making equipment

Standard cheese-consuming equipment

The process starts with cows though historically experts think that the first cheeses were made by accident. Ancient man stored milk in sacks make from calves' stomachs. As the milk sloshed around, the enzymes still in the stomach caused the milk to separate into a liquid and a white mass. The mass was taken out and then pressed to get additional liquid out, forming the first cheese. Cheese was (and is) handy since it is edible much longer than the milk from which it is made. The museum display continues on with the Dutch methods.

The first step is to have the right shoes!

Anatomy of a cow

Tools for milking

With the milk, the next step is to mix it with rennet (based on the enzymes from the cow, though rennets have been developed from other sources for vegetarians), which will thicken the milk and separate out the whey (the liquid part). Also, lactic acid is added to help the rennet, to provide flavor, and to kill bad bacteria.

Mixing tools

The next step is to remove more whey by putting the cheese in molds and pressing.

Cheese presses and molds

After pressing, the cheese is cured in salt water. The salt helps to provide flavor and makes it stay fresh longer. A cheese mark may be added at this point to identify who made the cheese and where.

Pressed and cured, now for the aging process

The cheese is then aged. Young cheeses are mild and creamy while older cheeses are more flavorful and drier. The maturing process can go from one month to one year or more. Once it's ready for sale, a label is attached and it's off to market!

Many different local cheese labels

The Netherlands is an ideal area for cheese-making, since the low, moist lands provide excellent grazing for dairy cows. Farmers would often make cheese and then bring it to market day to sell along with their other produce. The Gouda city council was granted the right to tax cheese in 1667. They built the Waag in 1668 to weigh the cheese and determine how much tax should be paid.

More cheese-weighing equipment

The exhibit has a small display on butter making as well, though that was of much less interest to everyone.

Butter-making tools

After the second watching of the video, the kids went around admiring everything. They were done in about two minutes, so it was lucky for us that we had more time!

J ready to eat!

We also noted the industrial, table-mounted cheese grater.

This would be convenient

Soon enough we went back down all the stairs and bought some samples to take back to England. Truth be told, we ate a bunch of it on the way back to England.

De Sint Janskerk, Gouda, The Netherlands

De Sint Janskerk in Gouda is named after John the Baptist, patron of Gouda. The first church here was built in 1280. The current cross-shaped basilica was constructed in the 1550s after a lightning strike caused a fire in the old church. It was a Roman Catholic church up to 1573 when the Protestants were given jurisdiction. It still functions as a Dutch Reformed Church, with two services on Sundays.

The church is surrounded with buildings making exterior photography difficult. 

Church spire seen from the town market

The main entrance

Near the tourist entrance

The "road" on the south side of the church

Photography is not allowed inside. The nave is the longest is The Netherlands at 123 meters. Many of the decorations were removed by the iconoclastic reformers but they left the famous "Gouda Windows" in the church. Some of the windows were made from 1555 to 1572 while the church was still Catholic; the rest were made from 1594 to 1603. The windows follow both biblical and national themes. The set around the choir shows the life of John the Baptist. Happily, post cards were for sale and I've scanned some of them.

John baptizes Jesus in the Jordan (click to enlarge)

The Last Supper (click to enlarge)

Judith beheads Holofernes (click to enlarge)

Jonah and the Whale (click to enlarge)

I didn't buy any cards of the national windows. They include some royalty and some famous battles and political events from The Netherlands's history.

Down a small hall is a study chapel with seven small stained glass windows from a monastery near Haastrecht. That monastery was where Erasmus was ordained as a priest. In 1551, the monks moved to Gouda for safety reasons. The chapel was very quiet and cosy, even though the theme of the windows is Christ's passion and death.

Scourging by the Roman Soldiers (click to enlarge)

The children enjoyed visiting the church especially since we bought the cheap binoculars from the gift shop. The binoculars help to see the windows. J and L used them to look at just about everything. They'd try the binoculars the right way and then flip the over and look through the wrong way. "You're so far away!" J would shout. Luckily we were just about the only visitors so the children's noisiness was less troubling than usual.

Catharina Gasthuis, Gouda, The Netherlands

The Catharina Gasthuis was a hospice for the ill until 1910. It became an art museum shortly thereafter. Many works of art are housed outside as well as inside. We never went inside but did admire the outdoors works.

The most striking part is the back entrance over the canal. It's the Lazarus Gate from 1609. It was part of the local leper hospital but then moved here.

The Lazarus Gate of 1609

Detail of the gate (click to enlarge)

It's a nice representation of Jesus's parable of the rich man who had a feast while poor Lazarus suffered outside, being licked by dogs. Up above is the end of the story for Lazarus, being held by Father Abraham in the afterlife.

Back of the Lazarus Gate

We enjoyed the open-air part of the museum because the kids could run around without embarrassing us too much. We saw many fine sculptures.

A harp and the Gouda Coat of Arms in the back

Not sure what this is

Stone beehive

We liked the lions; the kids like the big pile of leaves

The walls by the back entrance have several striking decorations representing the three theological virtues. I'm not sure why the women had to be topless, there's no explanation. Maybe it's like the story of the mule who does whatever its owner tells it. He loans the mule to a friend who can't get it to do anything. The owner comes over to figure out what's wrong. The first thing the owner does hit the mule across the face with a two by four to get its attention. Then it does what it's told.

Faith

Hope

Love is fundamental!

Another wall decoration shows some nice swans.

Swan's town?

The children did settle down enough to pose with another wall decoration that was at their level.

J, L, and the Gouda Coat of Arms

As usual in Gouda, canals are nearby.

Exit for aquatic visitors