Abcde BLOG

The Netherlands are full of Dikes, dams, ducts and ditches and they have been building them for over 800 years.  They have used windmills and pumps too to get rid of the water, that if the sea level rose by about 20 metres would swallow up the country in one gulp.  The Dutch are the experts in all that is water and water engineering. I come from an area in England to the east, a part of this area is called the Fens. During the seventeenth century the Earl of Bedford employed the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden to drain the fens. He set to work (with the help of thousands of labourers) and created the Bedford River and the New Bedford River which helped to move the water from the fens more quickly northwards and out into The Wash. Even today the area is known as the Bedford Levels.

The Zuiderzee works are considered to be one of the Engineering wonders of the world. Through building their dikes the Dutch have not only saved their country and become pioneers in water stopping, but also they have created a tourist industry from it too, a few weeks ago I posted about Kinderdijk, one of the post popular tourist attractions in the Netherlands.

Recently there have been so many natural disasters, each country has its own waiting disaster, not meaning to put a damper on things (pardon the pun) but in the Netherlands that disaster would be the sea reclaiming its territory. It nearly happened in 1953,  the Dutch were once again confronted with the power of the sea. The colossal disaster happened on February the 1st. It was to be one of the biggest floods in the history of the Netherlands.After the collapse of numerous seawalls and dikes the dike at along the river Hollandse IJssel was all that remained to protect three million people in the extremely low laying area's of North and South Holland. In the morning of February 1 this caused it to break under the immense pressure of the water. With the gab widening and moving rapidly into Holland the mayor of Nieuwerkerk commandeered a ship called “de Twee Gebroeders” to be sailed into the hole and plug it that way. Captain Aire Evegroen successfully sailed his ship into the hole and lodged itself firmly into the dike. On February 2nd rescue operations and repairing the dikes/dams began, however many people lost their lives.

A childrens story has been written about a boy saving Holland from the floods, The little hero of Haarlem

There are even some Dutch sayings about dikes and ditches:

je kunt niet over twee sloten tegelijk springen (you can't jump over two ditches at the same time)
English version would be You can't have your cake and eat it.

ouwe koein uit de sloot halen ( get old cows out of the ditch)
English version would be Dragging things out from the past.

It kind of reminds me of living in Spain and hearing many tourists order "Polla y papas" instead of chicken "Pollo". Ill let you google that one youself.