Today, we started the day off with breakfast, where I made the Dutch sprinkle bread that Enno had told us about yesterday as a treat. Then, we took the metro to the city center of Rotterdam, which was very rainy today. We did a waking tour of Rotterdam, and it was really interesting to see how the city compared to the other ones we had visited, like Amsterdam and Twente. Rotterdam reminded me much more of an American city, with all its new buildings, skyscrapers, and modern architecture. I think that I prefer Amsterdam’s style and architecture more, since I’m not a fan of brutalism, which was a style that I saw a lot more frequently in Rotterdam.

During our tour, we also encountered an interesting sculpture that doubled as a water collection method! Our next stop was the largest rooftop garden in the Netherlands, which was in the same area of Rotterdam that we had been touring, called the Dakakker. Up six flights of stairs was access to the rooftop. We stepped out and saw a portion of the garden, which was impressively biodiverse. We walked around a rooftop cafe to the other side of the garden, which was even larger than the first, and again very biodiverse. On this side, there were even a variety of chickens, specifically chosen due to their inability to jump upwards very high. Because of its rooftop location, the farmers have to take alternate approaches to water management. The farm uses a smart system, which applies the weather forecast to its water management systems–for example, if storms are coming, the roof’s water storage layer opens ahead of time to mitigate any flood risk.

After the rooftop garden, we decided to warm up in a very unique cafe that featured bouldering walls at the center. I enjoyed watching my friend Maddox boulder while drinking my cappuccino. 

Then, we traveled by bus to the Watersnoodmuseum, or the museum in remembrance of the 1953 flood. The 1953 flood was completely unexpected and caused 1,836 casualties in the Netherlands alone, but it pushed the Netherlands toward a new era of water control–directly causing the construction of the Deltaworks that we toured yesterday. The museum contained four caissons, each of which told its own story. The first caisson was dedicated to facts, the second to emotions, the third to reconstruction, and the fourth to future.