Today was very relaxed, with only one tour throughout Enschede, leaving most of the day open for whatever we wanted!

Before we got to that, we took a guided tour through the sustainable infrascturcture of Enschede. The city of Enschede is built all along a decline, similar to Pittsburgh, and the city struggles with flooding. From about 1860 to 1960, Enschede funded itself through the textile industry, which required large amounts of ground water to support. As this industry was phased out, less water was used and more ground water began to pool, giving Enschede the tendency to flood it has now. Coupling this with heavy rainfall that only increases as the climate continues to change, flood and water management is a very important constant consideration when building in and maintaining Enschede.

Our tour guide explained to us how their sewer system was initally built in the early 2000s to hold the city’s excess water, 20ml of rain per hour to be exact. After a devasting flood in the early 2020s that led to downhill streets and homes being flooded with a meter of sewer water, they were forced to reconsidred that threshold. Since then, the city has seen up to 60ml of rain per hour and have updated the system to support the overflow caused by such rain. If their system cannot hold the rain, water is diverted to the Kristalbad we saw yesterday for retention in addition to its typical tasks of filtration and reintrodution to the environment. We were also shown several natural basins around the city that, in the event of flooding, can hold water to protect the city downstream of the flood. Trees and other deep-rooting plants are all throughout the city to help hold the ground stable and intake more water as well. It was evident that each mechanism of water retention was built with sustainabilty in mind through the amount of plants and greenery used to hide them and from how the citizens of Enschede were taken in to account with their design. For example, with the natural water basin shown below, it could’ve been made deeper to hold more water, but the municipality limits the depth of their basins to prevent any injures if anyone were to fall in. The whole tour really opened my eyes to how delicate the balance is between sustainable engineering and keeping citizens happy can be.

After the tour, we spent the rest of the day exploring the Enschede market square since we were lucky enough to be there on one of their open market days. The weather was gorgeous, the shops were tons of fun, and the food stalls were delicious (aside from the latin food, that was just alright but I may be biased) :] I think we spent around two arounds in a retro video game store where I was able to get some really cool souviners! Wandedring the market area was super fun and I’m glad we lucked out and got a beautiful day to do it. I really loved getting to spend more time with the students from UTwente too! We were able to join them for an annual student social event which was a very fun send off for us. I’m glad I was able to properly thank them for sharing their company with us and have a great last hoorah.