Europe 2026 – Day 6 – Guest Blog – Dayle

This is the link to Lisa and Alina’s day.

David, Wayne and Dayle took an early train from Sloterdijkdirectly to Alkmaar, where the quite narrow streets were starting to fill with Good Friday tourists. 

The Alkmaar Cheese Market is the oldest and largest in the Netherlands. The tradition continues since Alkmaar had its first cheese scale in 1365.

Good Friday was the opening day, held every Friday 10:00-1:00 until the end of September. Street vendors set up cheeses, waffle and sweet treats and handmade crafts.

  

Trucks deliver as many as 2,400 of the 12.5kg Gouda cheese wheels on the market square (Waagplein).

The cheese carriers, who join the guild and train for 2 years, arrived promptly by 9:30am. They wore white clothes with red, blue, yellow or green hats to signify their company. The white-hatted Cheese Father called the roll and inspected each carrier.

At 10:00 sharp, the Cheese Bell was rung. The honour this year went to the newly elected municipal councillors. The inspectors examined the cheeses, bore a sample, tap, feel and taste them.Smell and elasticity indicate fat content. They cut a wheel in half to view the number and distribution of holes.

The auction price for all the cheese is determined by hand-claps, as is the tradition. As each batch is sold, the Cheese Carriersloaded 8 wheels onto their sled and carried to the weighing house. Carriers are trained in a trotting manner (kassdragersdribbel), which allows the cart (berrie) to remain still. Spilling the cheeses would not do!

The carriers returned to the square, where the workers(ingooiers) in brown shirts loaded the cheeses onto hand carts to be moved around the corner to the waiting buyers’ trucks.

    

The crowd was entertained by the carriers, the mistress of ceremonies, the inspectors and works showing off the huge wheels of Gouda. Young ladies moved around the perimeter of the square selling E15 cooler bags of 3 cheeses. 

   

We visited the cheese museum inside the weighing building.

An interesting collection of different antiques and art conveyed the history. The dairy farmers tended the cows and their wives churned butter and made the cheese. This Rijksmuseum reproduction of an unknown artist 1500-1574.

This group of tiles celebrated 75 years of cheese making. 

As standards improved and processing moved to factories, this type of dairy cart c1880 was used by street vendors,

In the 1950s, time-saving machines were invented, including this Cheese O Matic vending machine.

Looking from the second floor window of the museum, we could see the market square almost clear of cheese. It was time for lunch and heading back to the train station.