Album of the Day: metacontinues – Frums
Today was interesting, only consisting of a short tour of Enschede’s very own city center. Historically, Enschede was one of the few towns not completely submerged at the inception of the Netherlands due to its MASSIVE 40-meter incline, which is still somehow higher than the entire country. Due to this incline, the town has had many issues regarding its water storage and management. These issues culminated in massive flooding caused by the water storage system being overloaded and overflowing into the lower parts of the town. What’s really interesting is that you can barely feel the incline within the actual city but it’s prevalent enough to fundamentally shift the design of the city. Part of why the water infrastructure failed was because it was built for when Enschede had a textile industry, which is notorious for using up a lot of water. After they eventually switched from textiles, massive changes needed to be made to ensure flooding doesn’t happen again. One of the big things added was green spaces that are sunk down next to roads to allow for water to soak into the ground all around Enschede and not just at the bottom of the hill. Overall, the tour was fun and taught us a lot about water management in places like the Netherlands, which rarely have any incline at all.
Aside from the tour, we had a lot of free time. During our free time, me and my group of friends decided to explore Enschede and its farmer’s market. The market was pretty nice, having all sorts of fresh produce available for purchase in bulk. We also ate lunch from the stands at the market. DO NOT HAVE LATIN AMERICAN FOOD IN THE NETHERLANDS!! Safe to say it wasn’t very good and we needed to buy other food. The desserts at the market were delicious. We also visited a CD store, where I picked up a few European CDs to listen to back home, and a video game store, which had a surprising amount of stuff considering Enschede is far from the bigger city centers of the Netherlands. Overall, today was very fun and a much-needed rest from the constant touring of the previous week.
