(bicycle wheels rattling)
(upbeat music)
- It's the ocean versus the Dutch.
That's the battle that's going on right now.
(ticking)
It's been going on for hundreds of years
and you know, who's winning, the Dutch.
(upbeat music)
See all that water,
it's super ingenious the way they designed it.
Can you tell the engineering marvel?
- If I hear one more thing about the water.
(upbeat music)
- Look at this map of Holland in 1300,
compare this to a map of Holland today.
The country has gained land.
Yes, thousands and thousands of square kilometers
of land has been won back from the ocean.
(ticking)
The story of this battle between the ocean and the Dutch
explains why Holland is good at cheese,
why Amsterdam has canals,
Why Dutch people ride bikes.
(upbeat music)
- And for those who are confused,
the Dutch, Netherlands and Holland are all the same thing
and they all have different reasons
and I'm not gonna go into them.
You can like, look at Wikipedia.
This is just when I use those words,
it all has to do with the same thing, which is this country,
okay?
(upbeat music)
So the Netherlands or Holland or whatever you wanna call it
is a country that is sinking.
It's actually...
the majority of it is under sea level
or right at sea level.
(upbeat music)
I mean, if you look at the map of Holland,
you see that a lot of it
is just these little strips of land
that are right up in the North sea
and the ocean and the wind
just kind of eat away at this land year after year.
Instead of fleeing these coastal communities
that were slowly sinking into the water,
about 500 years ago, the Dutch started to fight back.
(upbeat music)
Now, let's just be clear about one thing,
which is, fighting the ocean,
the incessant, timeless powerhouse, the ocean,
is a very difficult thing.
Where are we going?
- Texel
- What?
(upbeat music)
Texel?
- Texel.
(upbeat music)
- We made it.
(upbeat music)
- This battle between the Netherlands and the ocean
is now much more real for me,
and this wind and these waves
are so crazy and consistent.
They're just eating this land alive
and yet the Netherlands have decided to fight back
and they're doing a pretty darn good job.
(upbeat music)
- Holland is up for this task.
They've developed a whole system,
a whole science behind hydrological engineering
that has allowed them to combat
the effects and the erosion of the ocean.
- My favorite is the Curry ketchup,
and Johnny loves the (indistinct)
and they actually go really well together.
Like us.
(laughs)
(upbeat music)
- Okay, so how do they actually do this?
This is where it gets really interesting.
(upbeat music)
There are a few techniques that the Dutch use
for their wizardry over the water.
The first one has to do with them building a wall
around a body of water that they want to turn into land.
Build a wall around it and then they, back in the day,
would build a windmill next to those walls
and they would use the windmill to spin,
and as the windmill would spin,
that would spin a pump that would pump the water out
of that land.
(upbeat music)
They'll plant on it,
and they will do whatever they need to do
to actually make it a firm, dry, habitable land
and then they'll build entire cities on.
(upbeat music)
And then in 1932, Holland had a huge win.
(upbeat music)
There's this giant part of the country
that was a part of the sea.
And they finally built this huge wall.
(upbeat music)
Building this giant wall, created a barrier
between the saltwater sea and made this huge body of water
into a fresh water lake.
(upbeat music)
After they built this wall,
they then started to section off little pieces
of this newly created Lake,
and to start to turn those into land as well.
So this is all of the land that they have created
since 1932, when they built a wall to make this Lake.
I mean, it's totally crazy.
(dramatic music)
The Netherlands, actually, a few years ago,
got a new province, like a new state in their country,
not because of any administrative reform,
but because they literally reclaimed a giant piece of land
that used to be under the sea.
(dramatic music)
So much of the Dutch coastline looks like this,
just super fortified with asphalt
and a million other building materials
that they have come to
for hundreds and hundreds of years of experimentation.
It seems simple, it's like a wall,
but in this wall lies the big secret
to Holland not sinking,
and they don't always work.
There have been times when these walls break,
but for the most part, this has been a success story,
(soft uplifting music)
But it's not just creating land out of water
it's also just how they manage water
in every one of their cities.
(cheerful upbeat music)
Amsterdam used to just be, I mean,
you can hear it in the name, a dam
on the Amstel river.
(cheerful upbeat music)
They then built it up
and they created this series of canals,
a very intentional design, as you can see,
and in doing so,
they made this city a very accessible boat city,
which was a very lucrative thing to do
back in like the 1500's and 1600's.
Amsterdam became an economic hub in Europe
and developed a very quickly.
A population boom contributed to the golden age of Holland.
And even today, Amsterdam is a giant
economic and global hub,
which you can attribute to how the Dutch
have just mastered water
and learned how to intentionally design their cities
and their country around water management.
(cheerful upbeat music)
A lot of the things we think of as quintessential of Dutch
come from this culture of water management.
And it now that sounds like the wonkiest thing in the world,
but listen to me here, see the bikes,
the bikes are a product of this low land
because when you have flat land,
it's relatively close together
because as most of the land is waterlogged,
then bikes become a really efficient,
viable transportation means.
You also have some of the most fertile grounds in the world
for growing grass,
which then becomes fertile pastures for cows,
which produce amazing dairy products,
which is why Dutch cheese is such wonderful, amazing cheese.
And then of course there are windmills.
Windmills are a huge Dutch thing.
Windmills come from this history of pumping water
from lakes and the ocean to create new pieces of land.
For a long time windmills were the technology,
which is why Poland is full of windmills.
Finally, you have these tulips.
Tulips are another huge Dutch thing.
The reason for this is that tulips grow
in this special clay-sand-soil mixture
and a lot of that exact soil is right here in Holland
because of the fact that a lot of this land
was under water before they reclaimed it,
and so it's perfect for growing tulips.
So a lot of Dutch culture
could be attributed to water management
and conquering the water.
(upbeat music)
I hope you now understand why Amsterdam has canals
and the marvel of Dutch water management.
So much more to learn.
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(upbeat music)