For our last day in Enschede, we toured the city center and got to experience a Dutch farmers market first hand. Although Enschede is much different than Amsterdam, the city still focuses on sustainability and meeting the needs of its residents in how it is built. Enschede is one of the few parts of the Netherlands built on a hill which means water from rain storms flows from the top of the city to the lower levels where residents live. This has led to flooding in the past when climate change has caused rainfall levels to be higher than normal which displaced many residents of the city. To combat this, the city added more drainage systems to their roads and created sloped inlets on the sides of the roads where grass and plants are in order to collect the water and use it to grow the ecosystem instead of letting it flow down the hill. The water will run off the road and collect in these pockets of grass which prevents residents on the lower end of the hill from flooding and property damage. This is a prime example of the innovations sustainable engineers make in the Netherlands in order to protect residents while still keeping the environment in mind. With this system, residents are protected from flooding while plants collect water for their own use and the drainage grates repurpose this water and send it to areas in need as well as the kristalbad we toured earlier in the trip.

While at the markets after our tour of the city center, our group split up to grab lunch and see what items and goods were being sold. There were lots of vegetable, fish, and flower stands around the farmers market where residents sold and bought what they needed for the week. There were also food stands for purchasing lunch and sweet treats like Dutch mini pancakes with powdered sugar and nutella on top or stroopwafel. While grabbing lunch for myself, I noticed the presence of mainly Indonesian and Filipino cuisines being offered around the market. This is largely due to the colonization of these areas by the Dutch in the 1600s due to the spice trade. Even while we were in Amsterdam, many of the restaurants we passed offered Indonesian and Filipino traditional dishes or dishes with aspects of their cuisines. After further research, most Dutch food has some relation to these different cuisines because of the Dutch spice trade and colonization of these countries. The Dutch spice trade was responsible for the wealth of the Netherlands and is a large part of their culture as seen through their meals, world relations, and maritime history.