Today we traveled to the province of Zeeland to visit Watersnoodmuseum and Deltapark Neeltje Jans!
On the hour-long bus ride from the hostel to the museum, we were in the midst of farming and agriculture in the Netherlands. Having grown up around farms, I could immediately spot differences between farms in the Netherlands and the United States. For example, there are more buildings accompanying a farm in the US, like a barn or slio, whereas the farms in the Netherlands did not have those additional buildings.
When we arrived at the museum, I was surprised to discover the museum was actually a flood dike, which is essentially a dam with water on one side and not both. I have never learned about the North Sea Flood of 1953 (a horrific natural disaster that killed 1836 people) before, so I was very impressed by the plethora of information the museum had to offer. There are artifacts from surviving families and stories of families that did not survive, which really reinforced how recently this tragedy occurred. What I found interesting was the initial reaction people in 1953 had when they knew a storm was coming. Many people underestimated the storm and how badly it would decimate towns, similar to how we still tend to downplay tragedies before they occur (for example the pandemic and Hurricane Katrina).
In order to prevent a flood like this from happening again, the government sanctioned the construction of Delta Works, a system of dikes, dams, storm surge barriers, etc. to control floods. The system consisted of dikes that can raise when the weather is stable and lower when there is an incoming storm. In addition to protecting the Netherlands from future floods, the system also connected the islands in Zeeland by highway, allowing for faster transportation across the province.
We then went to visit Deltapark Neeltje Jans, a museum and theme park based off of Delta Works. Our tour guide explained how the entire system operates and that it cost 3.3 billion euros to build. Though the function of the dikes seems simple (since they just raise and lower), it is an incredible feat of engineering. The whole system is approximately 18.5 miles long and can be raised or lowered in under two hours. We walked outside of the museum and around the theme park (which only consisted of a few playgrounds, a waterslide, and an aquarium) to get a better vantage point of the part of the Delta Works we actually traveled over.
After learning about the construction and functions of Delta Works, we then took a boat out into the North Sea. The wind was brutal but I managed to go outside and take a few pictures of the sea. The boat ride lasted around 30-45 minutes and then dropped us back off where we had lunch at the museum cafeteria. We left at around 3:30 to take a two-hour bus ride back to Amsterdam!
Tomorrow is our designated free day where we will probably end up at the largest vintage market in all of Europe!