Polders

So 1/3 of The Netherlands is actually below sea level. How crazy is that?! I would be scared to live there. Many dikes and dams (made out of land, not concrete) were built to empty the water and create land. Therefore, the country is made up in large of empty lake bottoms, called “polders.” Going to Volendam, we drove over many dikes filled with water, with the land being about 3 – 6 meters lower. There are also man-made ditches all over the land draining the water away into the dikes and then into the ocean. That’s where the windmills come in…to pump the water away. They were also used to crush cocoa beans for chocolate, wheat for flour, or nuts for oil. Because the land is so low and flat, there are no mountains. The tour guide joked that the dikes were the mountains. So the people of The Netherlands have to pay a special tax…a dam tax (meant both ways. haha!). In the past a couple of the dams broke and the people got very mad so now the dams are checked every 5 years. Well, that gets expensive so the people have to pay for it…a dam tax!