Today I woke up at 8:30, ate breakfast, and packed up. We left our hotel in Amsterdam at 10 am and then took a bus to Zaanse Schans, which is a quaint neighborhood in a town just outside of Amsterdam. This is a typical 19th-century Dutch neighborhood along the water that had all of its properties moved there for preservation since 1959. Now the neighborhood is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Netherlands. It is full of wooden windmills and houses. The first thing that we did was go to the Henri Willig cheese store where they taught us a bit about how their cheese is made. They start by filling up a tub with milk and other ingredients. The tub has an automatic mixer that has blades on it so that the curds can separate from the liquid, and they turn the curd into cheese. By the end of the mixing process, there is only 10% curds, and the rest is liquid. The cheese, made of cooked and compressed curds, is covered in a plastic coating and allowed to age for up to 9 months. The longer it is aged, the more mature it is considered. An important part of their company is sustainability, so they make use of the liquid whey that makes up 90% of the mixture. Many cheese manufacturers throw this away, but Henri Willig’s is used to make beer. They then can use this beer to make more cheese, which allows them to reduce waste, showing their sustainability efforts. They didn’t mention this, but I am assuming that this also helps them to increase their profits since they are making use of all of their materials.

Another aspect of sustainability that Henri Willig addresses is in the ingredients used to make cheese. Most cheese is made with animal rennet that can only be obtained by killing the animal. In order to maintain the environment and reduce animal cruelty, Henri Willig uses microbial rennet that is made from microbes such as yeast or mold. This has another added benefit, which is that their cheese can be eaten by vegetarians. This also probably helps the business by broadening its consumer market.

We then got to go into their shop and sample some of their delicious cheese. They had a wide variety of cow and goat cheeses with other ingredients added to them, including garlic, coconut, truffle, and different herbs.

After leaving Henri Willig, we explored Zaanse Schans. We first went to an antique store and then ate lunch just outside the neighborhood. We also walked to the end of the neighborhood and took some pictures.

We left Zaanse Schans at 3 and checked in to our hostel in Rotterdam a little after 4. From what I have noticed so far, Rotterdam seems to have more cars on the roads than Amsterdam did, but I still saw a lot of bikes around. I just got back from dinner at McDonald’s, and I noticed that all of the food tasted less like fast food and more like normal food. It was definitely more expensive than McDonald’s in the United States though. I can’t wait to spend the week here and see what Rotterdam has to offer!