"It's a small world after all"...

Yesterday we paid a visit to the mini world of Madurodam, by the beach of Scheveningen in Den Haag. It is really like all of Holland in one little city, with miniatures on the scale of 1:25 of everything from Schiphol Airport to the Rijksmuseum (with its own mini paintings!), from the Valkhof in Nijmegen to the harbour in Rotterdam, and from windmills to shopping centres. In one of the photos below you can see Jeroen proudly posing next to the miniatures from Nijmegen :-) You are also able to see Hansje Brinker continuing his very important work by keeping his finger firmly in that dyke, and just how far away from Oz we are on this side of the world.

Madurodam was first opened back in 1952 as some kind of memorial to a guy called George Maduro from Curacao. He was killed during WWII and his parents wanted to set up something to honour him. One of the first miniatures you see as you enter the "park" is of the house he was born in on Curacao. The attention to detail is so lovely - you can watch "people" getting their haircut at the hairdresser, having a drink at the local Irish Pub, harvesting flowers in the flower fields, waiting for their train at the station etc etc It makes you feel just like Godzilla peering into all the little windows! There are funerals, weddings, boats crossing the harbour, luggage making its way along the conveyor belts of the airport, and a waterskier busy at the mini beach. Even all the trees are mini versions of the real thing - maybe some kind of Dutch bonsai :-))

It is also a well known fact that Pinkeltje, a favourite childrens' book character, visits Madurodam every now and then. Pinkeltje is no bigger than a pinky finger and looks a bit like a mini garden gnome. He and his mouse "brothers" arrive in Madurodam by toystore helicopter, landing at the airport, and he spends his days pretending to be a shopfront mannequin and generally getting up to mischief!

Alli xxx