The Way We Were

Time travel in the restored village of zaanse schans.

- Kareena Gianani

Rows of green wooden houses look like pretty trims along both banks of the Zaan River in the Dutch city of Zaandam.Windmill blades rotate sleepily, and each gust of wind carries the rich aroma of cocoa from a factory across the water. Cyclists whizz past, pedalling further into the endless peat meadow landscape.

I am lulled into feeling that I’m in the faraway countryside. Such is the effect of Zaanse Schans, a village preserved to depict life in 18th- and 19th-century Netherlands, just a 25-minute drive from buzzy Amsterdam.