A visit with John and Nancy, PBase friends from Virginia and Martha, my friend from Zaandam, to Czar Peter House at Zaandam
Peter the Great visited Zaandam for the first time in 1697. During a whole week, he stayed at Gerrit Kist’s small wooden house to familiarise himself with the ship building and paper making techniques of the more modern Western countries. For four months he studied ship building, working as a ship's carpenter in the docks of the Dutch East India Company in Zaandam. He travelled incognito under the name of Peter Michaeloff, and he visited Zaandam on three other occasions, the last time in 1717. Over the years, Gerrit Kist's little house suffered damages from floods and moisture, so in 1895 Emperor Nicholas II ordered that the house should be enclosed within a stone building. Every year, the site is visited by thousands of tourists, and when Napoleon saw the little house he commented, “For great men nothing is too small!”
This place was recently visited by Doema members. President Poetin expected in November.