Fridays are cheese market day in Alkmaar, and by all accounts, this is the only remaining cheese market in the country. Today it’s set up with an emcee who explains the goings-on in the cordoned off square in Dutch, German and English. The cheese marketer’s guild is medieval, and one of the few still officially extant. As the cheeses are brought out on large flattish sled-like flats, carried in by two men each, a series of things happens. Cheeses are checked for weight, appearance, and taste by a posse of cheese-masters (for lack of a better word). They are sometimes halved and often scored down the middle with a special tool that removes a cylinder of cheese for tasting. Finally the cheese rounds are taken and loaded onto carts and eventually—off the main square—to refrigerated trucks. Today the pageantry is merely a simulation of times past (especially since pricing and payment no longer take place on the square), largely done for tourists. Prices are now established directly by the dairy industry. Everything from the ancient weights in the weighing house to the gorgeous golden rounds of cheese themselves is somehow magical. All this despite the insistent drizzle.
We roam the various sides of the square, checking out, amongst other sights, a klompen(wooden clogs) maker, and then decide to take the city walk detailed in the VVV’s (this is the Netherlands official tourist board) pamphlet. The walk takes us all over the old town, hopping over its many canals, and creeping along alleys insufficiently wide for any form of modern transportation save a bicycle. There are old stone houses, most with gorgeous gables, historic taverns and the often beautiful reliefs called gable stones above doorways that indicate the profession of the home-owner(of old), or the nature of the business in the house. Miraculously the rain has disappeared, so we're able to have an enjoyable ramble.
Below check out the look of the cheese market and then highlights of the walk.
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