Greetings from Under the Sea…
It’s pretty obvious when you get a first glimpse of the Netherlands, that the country is flat. Very flat… :-) In fact, you can often see for miles around. And what’s more, a quarter of the land is below sea level.
Fancy a quick tour?
How do you protect Amsterdam from a sea? Well... you build a 35 kilometre dam....
Just a few miles south we enter the Anna Paulona polder...
Ah... yes... the Zaanse Schans... Threatened with demolition 35 houses were bought and relocated to a museum. Resulting in this lovely scene...
And since last year Zaandam, a city just north of Amsterdam got a bigger one which house a hotel and some offices.
Well, lets take a train from here cause driving your car in Amsterdam is horrible...
Well, that was only a 12 minute trip to Amsterdam City centre.
Whoops, wrong neighbourhood....
Just a nice nightshot of the "Magere Brug"
Did you know that Amsterdam is one of the "Greenest" city's in the world?
Over 30.000 of them parked here, and still there is not enough space... I present to you the "Bicycle flat"
Well, we can't forget one of our economic engines can we? For many this is where they get their first contact with the Dutch. NOTAM: Runway is way below sea level so don't be tricked by your altimeter.
Okay, were now just south of Amsterdam and we want to go to Rotterdam. By car it takes over an hour, no direct buses and by train we have to go via The Hague...
Let's fly with FYRA
Ow... not fast enough.... okay, from December 2012 we do it at twice the speed...
Right... Rotterdam. Well... As I'm from Amsterdam myself I do not like this city. But it has it's history. Holland fought brave... but "He who must not be named" forces the Dutch to surrender by destroying the city completely...
Just west of Rotterdam you'll find the Maesland kering. This massive movable dam will protect Rotterdam and the land behind it from flooding during extreme weather conditions in combination with surge tide.
It has been closed for shipping traffic only once (during a test) and has remained open since. The Dutch hope they will never have to use this kit to keep the water out. We build to protect, not to use it.
There were two events last century that made the Dutch realise that we are just a small country. The first was the second world war, with the second disaster just less then ten years later... When weather turned to the worst....
The Delta Works is a series of construction projects in the southwest of the Netherlands to protect a large area of land around the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta from the sea. The works consist of dams, sluices, locks, dikes, levees, and storm surge barriers. The aim of the dams, sluices, and storm surge barriers was to shorten the Dutch coastline, thus reducing the number of dikes that had to be raised.
Along with the Zuiderzee Works the Delta Works have been declared one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Well, that was a short impression of the country I live in.
Greetings from Almere (-6 meters)
