Miniature Dutch Village

	Eighty buildings, boats, windmills, animals and people presented in 1:24 scale recreate the architecture and customs of A Day In Holland. Water-filled canals and a German LGB model train and trolley twist through the Miniature Dutch Village's illustration of the Netherlands.

	Peddlers, a wooden shoe maker and the flower cart vendor hawk their wares while boats bring cheese to the market in a replica of a typical Alkmaar, Netherlands scene.
	It's winter in the province of Friesland. Sinterklaas, accompanied by his helper Piets, arrives on his white horse the eve of December 5 and the day of December 6. Shoppers scurry to buy traditional chocolate letters for their Sinterklaas celebrations. Ice skaters glide on the frozen canal and children fly down a hill on a Friesian sled. Spring tulips, allium, daffodils and hyacinth bloom in the Keukenhoff Gardens. A costumed boy perched in a flowering tree peers down on the gardeners. The model train passes architecturally correct replicas of the Friesland Planetarium, cheese market and the old fortress Waterport at Sneek. Between the tombstones in the church cemetery sits a woman wearing a blue mourning costume.
	A windmill turns above fields of tulips. Each field beds 500 miniature tulips.
	Chickens, cows, sheep and horses feed on the grass surrounding a thatched roof hay barn, reminiscent of a Gelderland farm. It's laundry day in the Hindeloopen fishing village. Miniature ladies hang their tiny clothes on the line to dry while a farmer takes his boat load of cabbages down the canal to the vegetable market. The canal runs to a dyke that keeps the ocean out of the lowlands. A warehouse holds an extra gate for the lock on the dyke--in case of an emergency. Beside the lockkeeper's building is a drawbridge. Sheep graze on the dyke watching a boy sitting at the lock with a wooden shoe tied to his fishing pole. Passing boats put money in the boy's wooden shoe in exchange for raising the drawbridge. In the city the trolley passes docked houseboats. People enjoy lunch at a sidewalk cafe while watching vendors sell bread and sharpen scissors from their carts. Above the bookstore a music studio is filled with miniature instruments. Peek into an upstairs apartment and discover beautiful furnishings, including oriental rugs and chandeliers. The trolley approaches the canal and meets flower boats bringing tulips to the flower market. A street organ, antique shop, fish shop and apothecary add to the busy diorama. As the canal flows back into the Holland countryside a farmer is seen moving a cow by boat back to his combined house and barn. (The cow lives in the back, the farmer lives in the front.) Miniature Dutchmen practice pole vaulting across the canal. Their leaps, suspended midair, signal the close of . . . A Day In Holland.