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Travel Journal
by Sage Basri
Day 1: Welcome to the Netherlands
I’m embarking on a trip to the Netherlands with a Penn Global Seminar to learn about the Dutch approach to climate resiliency and adaptive infrastructure. I’ll be here til the 12th, traveling from Rotterdam to Amsterdam, then Delft, Arnhem, and Nijmegen.
Our first visit was to a floating farm in Rotterdam which is very proud of its “transfarmation”. The farm floats on concrete foundations which displace water so they don’t sink. The farm is not tethered to anything so it bobs up and down with the water levels when it storms. It is, however, held in place so it doesn’t travel downstream. They have 40 cows there which produce extra creamy milk as a result of their breed and their feed. We sampled buttermilk, raspberry milk, pear and apple milk, and whole milk. Buttermilk tasted like watered down sour cream and was surprisingly refreshing! My personal favorite was the raspberry flavor. The milk and cheese they make is all processed onsite and sold in a little store there to customers, but they also sell milk to cafes and raw milk to cheese makers. The farm is organized with circular economy principles meaning it’s self sufficient (mostly). They have solar panels which float by themselves adjacent to the farm. They have an aeration technology which allows the emissions from the manure to decrease 60% which was a really awesome statistic because animal waste is a large source of farming emissions. The cows are fed food waste from all over the city, making up 60% of their diet. This was a really cool experience, I hope they open one of these in New York and other coastal cities of the US. In crises where access to the city is limited, like a hurricane, New York grocery stores run out of food within three days. Floating farms can be a solution to abate that risk while reducing food miles (the distance/carbon emissions associated with your food). This place just sounds like a win win win win.
Afterward, we went back to the hotel and I rested for a minute then went back out to the Markthal with some girls from the trip. I had been there once before, it’s a massive food hall like Reading Terminal but with more options. Some girls got waffles and poffertjies which I will sample later on in the trip.
At night we got dinner at a restaurant called Bazar where we sipped mint tea and watermelon juice, ate kebabs and rice with nuts and rasins in it. It was delicious and I would recommend it!
Day 2: Biking in the Rain! What a glorious feeling!
Today we started with a very Basri move — a three hour bike tour around Rotterdam! It was awesome. Pro tip: go biking when it’s raining out to ride in less busy bike lanes. On our tour we visited the Hotel New York, which now exists at an important emigration point from Europe for people looking to move abroad. We biked over the Erasumus Bridge to get a better look at the floating offices of the Global Center on Adaptation. Like the floating farm yesterday, this office building rises and falls with the tide in Rotterdam’s inner harbor. As the premium for space in coastal cities rises and rises, we should definitely consider moving onto the sea. Plus it’s an adaptive strategy since the building would move with water, rendering it more safe from sea level rise. We biked past the Markethal, pencil building, and the cube houses which I went inside on my last visit here. We did not go inside this trip though. We also saw water retention basins which double as basketball courts in a lower income area of Rotterdam. These are helpful to prevent storm surge from inundating the rivers and flooding downstream during times of heavy rainfall.
After the bike tour we got a great boxed lunch with meats, breads, croissants (chocolate and plain), yogurt, an egg, chocolate milk, and a Twix bar lol. We ate this on the bus ride to the Maeslantkering, and we passed dozens of wind turbines along the way.
The Maeslantkering is also known as the Maslant Barrier. It’s a storm surge barrier which operates as two arms which open and close to hold back the water from the river Maas. The arms are each about as long as the Eiffel Tower is high. For storm surge protection, it’s used only as a last ditch method, it’s only been closed twice and both times were technically not necessary. The wall is 22m high but the canal is 17m deep so it protects 5m storm surge. It’s painted white to limit the thermal expansion because it’s designed with the precision of watch makers. It expands 20 cm as it is at max, but if it was dark grey would expand 60 cm and pressure would not be distributed properly. This was really fascinating for me to learn because I never thought about the thermal expansion properties of climate resilient infrastructure and how that affects their use; engineers in the group are probably more well versed in this stuff than I am, so I was listening closely to questions. There’s plans for a storm surge barrier like the Maeslantkering to be built by the US Army Corps of Engineers in NYC and Houston — and Houston is getting two. NYC’s would be smaller and the joint less complex, a single axis rotation vs the ball in socket joint that they have in the Netherlands. We learned that St. Petersburg also has one. This project cost over $1B USD which is insane! After touring the storm surge barrier, we had a convo w Pim Neefjes from the National Delta Program about consequences of sea level rise for the Rotterdam area, it was cool to hear from someone in government about this. We got very close to wind turbines which was amazing, they’re huge! This visit is a mechanical engineer's dream.
For dinner the group got together to have Indonesian food where I tried durian for the first time in drink form. It was kinda stinky and had an onioney aftertaste. I am open to trying it in fruit form because I know it’s such a polarizing food— people either love it or hate it! Super popular in East and Southeast Asia!
Day 3: We GoTo BoTu
Today we toured BoTu which stands for Bospolder/tussendijken neighborhood. It’s a somewhat low income migrant neighborhood, with people largely from Turkey among other countries. We came to hear about their local resilience strategy, Resilient BoTu 2028, to hear how community perspectives can be incorporated into resilience strategies. One cool thing our tour guide pointed out was the political poster reminding people to vote, and the guide described the different parties. There’s a right wing man running whose ad looks like it could be a Trump ad which is both scary and funny. There’s so many more political parties here than in the US.
Then we went to a round table with representatives from all over Europe and the US to listen to different presentations about climate resiliency from the lenses of landscape architecture, urban planning, real estate finance, policy, and more. We contextualized this information with the community of Eastwick in Philly which experiences chronic flooding, asking these experts for advice on what Eastwick should do given some of the similar circumstances.
After this very intense day I grabbed a lowkey dinner with some classmates near the hotel because it was pouring out and we did not feel up to traveling too far. The restaurant was called the Story, and definitely had high quality food, but it was sort of random so I don’t know if I would make an effort to go back there if I ever return to Rotterdam.
Day 4: Poldergeist’s big debut!
This morning we took a train to Delft after checking out of our hotel in Rotterdam. We left our suitcases at the hotel while we heard talks from Professors at TU Delft and IHE Delft. After Delft we had to trek back to Rotterdam, collect our bags, and train again to Amsterdam! This journey was short which was nice. When we arrived in Amsterdam we had to take a ferry from the train station to North Amsterdam, where we were staying. The good news is the ferry runs all day and all the time, so it’s not inconvenient.
For dinner I grabbed tofu poke and a stroopwafel with some classmates because we were tight on time before our evening activity. At night we attended the premier of a new Poldergeist video, a YouTube channel my Professor started to shake up the Dutch and provoke critical conversations he didn’t think were happening. Some classmates on the trip are spectacular artists who helped animate these videos. I encourage you all to check it out! His new video was followed by a Q and A and a panel discussion. The guests ranged from professors in the Netherlands, to researchers, to someone who works in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After the event I walked around the city with some classmates and found a bar where we spent the rest of the night. I actually met two girls abroad from Indiana University and one was from Colts Neck, a town nearby where I am from! The world is too small.
We trekked awhile back to the hostel after a great night.
Day 5: The Potato Eaters
Today we were at a research lab of sorts working on Amsterdam’s circular economy and building retrofits like biosolar roofs. Here I asked a few questions because these retrofits pertain to my senior thesis in Environmental Studies. We had the rest of the afternoon free so a bunch of classmates and I ventured to lunch together, and then to the Van Gogh museum. I snagged a picture with my favorite “Potato Eaters” and moseyed through the galleries. Afterward, I went to the Moco with some classmates. We were honestly underwhelmed because the advertisements made it seem like there would be more art from the renowned pop artists. When we got there, there were only two rooms of Keith Haring and Warhol, next to one Koons statue. Adjacent to these greats were two rooms full of NFTs. The first floor with many Bankseys was very cool though. For dinner I grabbed pizza with a group of girls in my class and it came out heart shaped! Very cute.
Day 6: Bike on a Dike
On day 6 we biked in North Amsterdam along the dikes which was incredibly fun! It was raining again but we didn't mind. We learned about the Polder Roof from an architect at MetroPolder which is basically a way to make roofs a retention basin. They are leak proof, of course, and help The Netherlands better control the flow of water in rivers. We asked why it was above the buildings and not below because of the added risk of leaking into the building, and it is because the water table is so high (3m below ground) so there’s not much room for storage. Then we visited a floating neighborhood, Schoonschip, which was really fascinating. They are heated by coils that pick up heat from the water which is warmer than it is outside, and radiantly heat the building via the floors. They all have toilets like those on airplanes which utilize vacuum force and only one liter of water versus the standard 5-6 liters per flush, making them much more sustainable. These homes are connected to each other via docks and all are required to have solar panels on the roof to push towards energy independence, though they’re not fully independent. They’re also all required to have either green roofs or walls which is super important for water retention, as well. This neighborhood was very cool but raises questions about gentrification in Amsterdam, as the North is generally viewed as more affordable than Central. But because these houses are luxury waterfront homes, they get high prices in the real estate market. Homes built for 400k Euros are on the market for over 1.5 million— insane. Overall this was a really interesting stop! Then we trained to Arnhem where a few of us got great Indian food before a night meeting with a real estate developer looking to build on rewilded land to make his case. In turn, we will visit with proponents of rewilding so they can make their case.
Day 7: (re)Wildest Dreams
On day 7 we were in Arnhem, and I woke up to an extreme weather/icy roads warning. This worried me because I knew we were scheduled to bike for a few hours. I found out no helmets were being offered so I decided to stay back from this activity which was a very difficult decision for me to make because I am not the kind of person who would want to opt out of a group activity. I was so worried about falling, however, that I thought I would just be anxious and not have fun. While the group was biking I bought a pair of boots-- the shopping in Arnhem is amazing! It's the fashion capital of the country, apparently. I linked back up with the group at a cafe for lunch. After lunch we had a meeting with a member of Arnehm's city council about plans to redevelop land that was previously an industrial site and is currently re-wilded with horses and buffalo. The developers who own the property right now want to build 400 homes there (in a flood plain), including social housing. This is a hotbed issue in the city now to decide if the developers should build or not (Flash forward to April 2023, the developers won the case).
After the scheduled meetings, a bunch of classmates and I went out for some Indonesian food which was very special! All over the Netherlands there is very delicious Indonesian food as a result of Dutch colonization.
Day 8: (E)bike on a dike
On day 8 we took a train to Nijmegen which is the oldest city in the Netherlands. There, we rented e-bikes and set off on a 40 km bike ride, 20km each way bike ride, along dikes bordering agricultural lands in the heart of the Netherlands. This was by far my favorite day because the weather finally let up for us, we were biking in the warm sunshine. We paused at a very cute little lodge which I wish I got the name of because I would absolutely love to go back, we had very delicious cheese and toast, as well as cranberry walnut bread with creamy butter-- the vegetarianism all throughout the trip was not because our trip was climate focused, surprisingly, but because The Netherlands had a nationwide campaign push for people to eat vegetarian the week we were there to raise awareness about cattle farming related climate change, so all the catering we got ended up being vegetarian! This has re-inspired me to eat less meat again. At this lodge I befriended a very cute lab who was eager to enjoy my bread scraps and sit by my legs during lunch. After 20km we stopped at a rewilded area, which is now populated with buffalo, much like Arnhem. Unlike Arnhem, people are not looking to develop there. On our walk we encountered signs of beaver which reminded me of the research I did in 2017 about beaver dams along the Boulder Creek in Colorado. We saw beaver lodges along the river and tree branches with all the bark eaten off-- exactly what beaver enjoy! At the end of the day, after returning our bikes, my classmates and I grabbed some french fries from a small shop and moved quickly to a local park to view the sunset. On our walk back to the train station, we saw some cool mural artwork and older looking buildings, evidence of this being the oldest city. The architecture this whole trip has been breathtaking.
Back in Arnhem we had a farewell dinner and the next morning we left bright and early to return to the US!
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