Windmills

I got a postcard with the above photo on it some years back from some people I know who were traveling in Europe, and in the best tradition of your better postcards it captures an image that by itself gives an excellent description of where it's from. Hey, it's a windmill and short of showing a bunch of guys wearing funny hats and clog-dancing, what could say "the Netherlands" better than that?

Windmills themselves are pretty cool anyway. When you are really young what could be more cool than a house with a propeller on it? (I don't know for sure but I'll bet that even girls thought that windmills were cool, until they discovered ponies.) Then in school we learned about windmills being used by the ancient Netherlanders to grind grain, torture heretics and whatnot using the power of the wind, and they're still in use today. That's cool too.

I found that as I got older windmills sort of faded into the background noise. Other things became important and eventually I just didn't think about them any more. Then I found this postcard and it all came rushing back to me. Windmills are still cool.

Anyway... Humouroceros