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Hello and welcome back to Oosterdam Day 7! We are officially halfway through the program, ladies and gentlemen! Today’s word is uitwaaien, a word that means “to walk in the wind”, or to go out for a windy day. It’s one of those special phrases that doesn’t quite have an English equivalent. That was precisely what happened today. (it was freezing) (I basically died)
After a beautiful bus ride down to the water, of which I spent mostly asleep, we arrived at the Watersnoodmuseum. The museum details the 1953 tragedy in which the dikes that protect the country from four main inlets of the North Sea were breached, resulting in a massive flood that took countless lives, destroyed entire villages and called for a complete upheaval of the flood prevention systems in place at the time. The museum features relics, stories, and information pertaining to the floods that took place and the lives that were lost. It also contains various memorabilia and tributes to the dead.
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Yesterday I mentioned the Netherland’s war on water and how for the most part, human life prevailed over Mother Nature. This was one of those occasions where we lost. The flood that occurred on February 1st was unprecedented; the first of its kind. It was the culmination of every extreme, wind and water, and everything that could go wrong did go wrong. But what happened next made all the difference. The emergency response was incredible; countries sent in shipments of materials, soldiers and first responders worked day and night without sleep to save as many people as they could. Something truly adorable was the number of “radio amateurs” that stepped up to assist in the transmission of vital information as much as possible. The exhibits were aesthetically pleasing and well-furnished and as per usual, I was one of the last ones out. It’s so easy to get lost in the story, you almost forget you’re inside one of the caissons used to repair one of the many broken dikes.
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Our final stop before heading back to Amsterdam (remember, we’re still in Rotterdam kind of!) was the world’s largest storm surge barrier—Oosterscheldekering. A few years after the flood of ‘53, the government introduced a variety of measures to better protect the country from flooding. That led to the construction of the Delta Works projects, the largest of which was Oosterscheldekering. We visited the local “theme park”, Deltapark Neeltje Jans, for a closer look into the complex mechanisms that keep the Netherlands above water. Massive gates, known as sluice gates, regulate the water levels on either side. The wind is very powerful this low to the water, so countless wind turbines are placed around the area to generate clean energy. All in all, the system is very productive. And while we didn’t get an up-close look at the storm surge barrier, it was very impressive from afar.
Alright! More to come tomorrow.
That’s all for today’s blog. I’ll see you tomorrow! 🙂