Goat Horns and Canals

Twelve thirty. A marsh. Reeds. Refugees from the south of the Netherlands wade in, ankle-deep in water. What they find here isn't a postcard. It's peat. Just fuel. Just work.

So they start digging ditches. Not for beauty. They dig to haul blocks of peat out on flat-bottomed boats. Working trenches, industrial logistics, thirteenth-century style. Centuries pass. The peat runs out, the trenches flood, and now it's called "the most romantic village in Europe." Nature is good at repurposing things.

The name has a story too. In the marsh, the settlers found goat horns, the remains of a herd drowned in some ancient flood. They hung them outside their houses as a memorial. "Giethoorn" literally means "goat horns." Behind the postcard picture sits a reminder of a catastrophe that happened before anyone lived here.

See those wooden bridges over the canals? There are more than fifty of them, along a village just six kilometres long, about an hour's walk. Many are private. To the owner, it isn't a "pretty little bridge," it's the front drive. Instead of a parking space, a landing stage.

And the thatched roofs all around? They used to be a sign of poverty. Now they're a sign of wealth. Few craftsmen can do the work, and upkeep is expensive. Status turned upside down, as it so often does.

In winter, when the canals freeze, people take the same routes on skates. The same "streets," just in a different state of matter.

And the village is alive. More than two thousand residents, kids on bikes, a postman on foot. No Disneyland here. Just people who live in the place everyone else travels to photograph.

Anything at all — a building, a word, a habit you never questioned. moygid dot online.