Today we visited the Delta works, a network of storm surge barriers meant to protect citizens from flooding and rising sea levels. After a catastrophic flood in 1953, the delta works project was sped up in order to protect the region that is already below sea level from further issues and dangers. Originally, the project could not have been started due to a lack of money from after the Second World War. After the devastating flood that took the lives of 1836 people, the government put all funding they could towards the project to protect the future of the Netherlands.
The actual barriers were built using a sea floor mat, concrete pillar structures, a concrete sliding wall, and a steel storm barrier that moves up and down to block waves depending on water level and danger. It was fascinating how the engineers behind this project had to build specialized ships to move the 18000 ton barriers to their specific spots in the sea to be lined up and connected with the concrete sliding walls. Once the barriers themselves were in place and the steel sliders were confirmed to be working, the road on top of them was expanded and made into a highway system to connect each land segment to the mainland and eventually Rotterdam. When water levels go above 3 meters, the gates automatically close to protect from flooding. Otherwise, they are controlled by operators in a building next to the Deltaworks who manually close them depending on the tide and how high the water level is/expected to be over the course of the day.
While eating lunch today at the museum, we enjoyed sprinkles on buttered bread, a traditional breakfast and treat for many Dutch children according to our tour guide. It turned out to taste much better than we all expected as no one at our table had ever tried this before or has sprinkles for an actual meal. We’ve seen sprinkles in the breakfast set up at each one of our hotels on our trip and can now finally say we tried this piece of Dutch food culture.
Our current hotel also has edible cups for syrup, butter, honey, etc to prevent excess waste. They are a waffle cone type material that are quite enjoyable to eat after pouring the syrup in them on your pancakes. This is the first time I have ever seen anything like this and definitely cuts down on the paper waste produced by the hotel during meals like breakfast with the amount of people and sauces they have to serve. It’s an interesting way of keeping the environment cleaner and the effect the hotel has more sustainable.
