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> I think the Dutch landscape is featureless and boring, windmills are a vast improvement. They look modern, industrious, cheerful. I recently visited relative
by pgeorgi 11y ago
> I think the Dutch landscape is featureless and boring, windmills are a vast improvement. They look modern, industrious, cheerful.
I recently visited relatives in a German village where in the last few years a bunch of windmills where built. We went for a walk outside the village, and I heard a surprised "oh, those windmills are much smaller than I remember them to be".
Turns out they looked imposing and scary in the beginning because they're of such a different scale than anything else in the area, but they got used to them quickly.
Like the Netherlands it's a relatively flat area, so I guess the effects will be similar (windmills looking huge at first, then perceptually shrinking).
- wobbleblob 11y agoThey are gigantic, they necessarily tower over everything (otherwise they wouldn't work), but once you take your gaze off the gigantic gray rotating blades against the clouds, and direct your eyes further down, you see [1] or [2]. Then you gaze back up again and think the windmill looks grand and beautiful in comparison. [1] https://stock-foto.nationalebeeldbank.nl/nationalebeeldbank_2014-1-842411-2_kletsnatte-akker-in-polder.jpeg https://stock-foto.nationalebeeldbank.nl/nationalebeeldbank_... [2] https://stock-foto.nationalebeeldbank.nl/nationalebeeldbank_2012-11-762840-2_moderne-woningbouw.jpeg https://stock-foto.nationalebeeldbank.nl/nationalebeeldbank_...
- pgeorgi 11y agoThey're large, of course. It's simply a matter of visual expectations: There's this flat land, with tiny houses, some forests surround it. Everything is laid out horizontally more than vertically. Then these vertical spikes appear. In such an environment windmills can seem frightening at first and feel like they're at least(!) 500 meters high since there's no frame of reference to them in the vertical. At some point they're simply large (still larger than everything else, but church towers, the former larger-than-everything structures, aren't frightening either - because people are used to them).
- wobbleblob 11y agoAre you referring to Northern Germany? It has been a long time since the Netherlands looked like that. It's flat, but the endless "vinex wijken" of identical tiny "rijtjeshuizen" are everywhere. Instead of forests, there are geometric rows of identical Populus × canadensis clones. At the very least I think the windmills fit right in, in many cases I find it makes the landscape look nicer, with an added vertical element and some movement. Vastly nicer looking than a coal plant.
- daemonfire300 11y agoI dont know where you went in Germany, but there are lots of areas where windmills actually cluster up the horizon.