We woke up in Rotterdam today and left the hostel at 8:30. Unfortunately, my phone charger had unplugged from the wall in the middle of the night so my phone died and my alarms did not go off. I wanted to wake up earlier because I keep sleeping through breakfast. Luckily, I was able to grab a piece toast with jam before we left and the bus out usb ports so I could charge my phone.
Our first stop was the Watersnood museum. My immediate impression of the museum was seeing the gabions they used to decorate the environment. I live on a recreational lake and we use gabions to control the erosion of the banks of the lake. Gabions are basically metal cages filled with rocks that can allow water to pass through but keeps silt and rocks from escaping. Just from seeing those, I could immediately tell that today will focus on water management which I have observed a lot back home and am interesting in comparing with.
The Watersnood museum commemorates the tragic deaths of about 1800 people in the largest natural disaster in Dutch history. A combination of high tides, strong storms and winds, and weakened dikes caused incredibly high waves that breached the dikes protecting the region. As a result, an incredible surge of water broke through and flooded the area.
The museum was beautiful and I did not expect to see so many things in the museum. It was actually incredible how large it was. One of the exhibits was a movie that was incredibly dramatic but talked about how water has always been a threat to people and we have to learn better ways to conquer it if we want to survive in the future.
After I got out of the museum, I got to explore the gorgeous area outside of it. It is a very remote area but it incredibly beautiful. We could walk along a fence a bit to go say hi to some cows. There was also an observation deck that gave us some information on local birds but also an incredible view. You could see over the dikes and could see a body of water with birds and sailboats. It was also surprisingly windy to me. I did not realize we were basically on the coast.
After the museum, we then drove to Delta Works to learn about their solution to the flooding. Going into Delta Works, I had absolutely no idea what they were about. Their 3D ‘film’ or ‘experience’ was also very dramatic but they did an incredible job with the visual and audio effects, it was really cool.
We then met up with our guide who started explaining about their project. I thought it was so cool. They originally wanted to block off the entire body of water but that would effectively create a dead sea and nothing would be able to live in that lake. There was also a small town that relied on the water for transportation and profited off of mussels and fish from it. Therefore, they came to a solution with gates that they could raise up and down. When the gates are up, water is able to pass through the opening freely. When the weather takes a turn for the worst and it looks like there is gonna be a really bad storm, they start to lower them. It takes a little over an hour for the gates to lower completely. The gates are controlled by workers in a nearby control room that watch for storms.
What I thought was really interesting is how the gates are made of steel and are only about 1.5 cm thick. In my mind, the force of the water is so incredibly powerful it’s beyond my imagination so I surprised 1.5 cm is enough. The area is also speckled with wind turbines to generate clean energy. Apparently, the goal was to generate 14% of the country’s power using sustainable, clean energy and all of these wind turbines were an effort to reach that goal. Currently, they are at about 12% so they may not reach that goal by their deadline but it is still a valid effort.
So the recreational lake I live on was man-made by a dam that acts as a flood control structure so the next town does not get flooded. It is on a much smaller scale but it has a similar idea. Most of it does fully block the water but there are four gates that get controlled by the US Army Corps of Engineers that open a certain number of them at a time to both control the water level of the lake and the river level going into the next town.
We got to go on another little boat cruise. Already, this is 2 more boats than I had expected to go on on this trip so I am rather pleased. After the ferry ride, we got to have lunch which was a blessing because having only one piece of toast was leaving me a little bit starved.
We then headed back and I got a lovely 2 hour nap in on the bus ride back to Amsterdam. I am currently writing this blog in the park because it is such a nice day outside. We are hopefully grabbing dinner from a nearby Italian place and then gonna eat it outside. I am very excited to go to the vintage market tomorrow so until then <3
