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Them Big Ol' Dykes
So today I took a day trip with a family from Rosthern whom are staying at the conference centre this week that I have taken to calling the "Bergens". We had already played the Mennonite game a few nights before and found a number of connections (although Taliah found way more connections than I managed to. All I found out was that they know auntie Paula from church and the father could recall Jared from when he directed "Death of a Salesman" at RJC). But back to our venture of the day. We went to a Dyke just past Rotterdam and took a tour of the place. When we walked in the door we noticed that there was what appeared to be a flea market of sorts and so we checked it out. The most interesting find (and were I still in Canada it could have easily become a find that would have been added to my stash of useless albeit interesting gadgets) was a oscilloscope (which could come in handy when I start wiring up my cheap ukulele's for electric awesomeness... but more likely it would just be a cool little gadget that has little use, much like my film projector). So we had some coffee and Mr. Bergen got to talking with the owner of the place who informed him that we could take a tour at four (which was 15 minutes away). It started with two videos about the North Sea flooding in 1953 and how they went about rebuilding the Dykes (they were both in English). Then we were given a little piece of paper with what the guide was saying in English (although he seemed to be saying an awful lot more than what I was reading). What I did learn from the day was just how important the Dykes and Dunes are to Holland... Without them it looked like a solid two thirds of the Netherlands would be underwater. And the most interesting thing is that they have actually used the Dykes to reclaim land from the Sea. In fact the entire 12th province of the Netherlands was reclaimed from the Sea (so if climactic change ever does actually drown our coast due to melting ice caps, we know who to talk to about getting that land back).
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