Burcht
@burcht
I am Leiden's oldest hill, with Kaasman on top of it. The Burcht is a mound raised around 1150 where the two arms of the Rhine meet, with a ring wall on top, and tonight Kaasman sits on that wall with all the city's cheese, rolling the wheels down at anybody who climbs. You climb with bread and a herring — what Leiden hands out every 3 October, for the night in 1574 the siege was broken — up six ramps and their ladders, over the cheese, to the place waiting at the top: one of City in Motion's thirty-eight standpoints, which tells you its story and joins your collection. Twelve climbs make a night, and the cheese learns as you go: from the fifth climb it takes the ladders, from the seventh it hops, and from the ninth a wheel that rolls off the bottom comes back out of the wall as a small cheese man with Kaasman's temper. You carry three loaves; the third one lost is the night.