Entering a fairy realm

Amsterdam’s canals may be better known, but it is nowhere near as picturesque as Giethoorn’s.

I took the road less travelled (by most foreign tourists, that is) and it led me to one of the Netherlands’ best-kept secrets — Giethoorn. Enid Blyton’s tales of picture-perfect scenes came to life when I visited this tiny patch of rustic joy in the east of the country.

About 90 minutes’ drive away from Amsterdam, Giethoorn is one of the most enchanting and timeless villages I have ever visited.
Interesting garden sculptures in Giethoorn.

Dubbed the Venice of Netherlands, it houses 7.5km of canals. A sprinkling of storybook cottages, complete with thatched roofs and trimmed gardens, line the canals. If a fairy realm really existed, then I imagine this would be its capital.

Connecting the cottages on opposite banks are 50 bridges that make you sigh with contentment just to gaze at them. Just like in Venice, many of Giethoorn’s houses were built on tiny islands and are only connected by wooden bridges.

I can imagine how this little corner of Holland has filled the canvas of many artists and inspired poets to get busy with their quills.

The village’s name is equally intriguing. According to www.worldisround.com, Giethoorn was founded around 1230 when fugitives from the Mediterranean settled here. They found a lot of horns of wild goats, probably victims of the big flood of St Elisabeth in 1170, and so they called the settlement Geytenhorn (horn of goats).
Getting around in a boat.

Later, it became Geythorn, and now it’s called Giethoorn. (I prefer the first two because I still have trouble pronouncing the last one. I think my Dutch friends have quite given up on me.)

This unassuming place attracts mainly local visitors. My friends said they had visited it when they were children and were pleasantly surprised to discover that nothing much had changed in the village. What I loved most about it was the well-preserved tranquillity, which is absent in many village-turned-tourist sites where commercialisation reigned supreme.

We strolled along the canals, although there were rental boats for those who preferred to discover the village the traditional way. The villagers were very friendly. They greeted everyone even as they cycled by.

We had poffertjes (bite-sized traditional Dutch pancakes sprinkled with icing sugar and eaten with melted butter) for lunch at one of the small cafés. A short drive away was another quaint town called Staphorst. It seems to be bigger than Giethoorn and has a main road running across it. Green window shutters and matching doors are characteristic of houses here.

I found it amazing how trusting the folk were. In front of some of the houses were tables of fresh produce and a coin box for people to drop the money for their purchase.
Poffertjes for lunch.

I was thinking that the criminal-minded could just cart off the coin box but the villagers had found the solution — the coin boxes were screwed to the table. Trust has its limit.

In one of the houses, we bought fresh cow’s milk. The rosy-cheeked seller was dressed in traditional Dutch attire complete with the famous wooden clogs. I was told that this was not an uncommon sight as many residents still believed in the old ways.

Coaxed by my friends, I drank a bit of the milk expecting the worse, but it was actually good, and I lived to tell about my day out in the Dutch country.