Day 5 (Sat 20170610) De Beemister UNESCO World Heritage Site

This was the first time I took the bus - to travel out of the city. It was a smooth-sailing one :)

Unlike many of the UNESCO sites I been to, de Beemister itself is entirely an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Interesting? It's like Nara, Japan. The entire area is a WHS because of its unique development. It was once filled with deep water. Using many windmills, water was drawn out and the land was re-engineered into grids of usable land, mostly for agricultural use. It is about 4 metres below sea level.

Source (from Wikipedia: Polder)
A polder is a low-lying tract of land enclosed by dikes that forms an artificial hydrological entity, meaning it has no connection with outside water other than through manually operated devices.
de Beemister belongs to the type with land reclaimed from a body of water. 

Click HERE to read more about Beemister
Click HERE to read the details at the UNESCO WHS website

This was the first time I walked into an UNESCO office, thinking it was the museum (which was situated behind the office building). The lady in the office actually described the place to me and I got to watch the documentary that explained the work behind maintaining the area. It is a massive job, but was well executed.

Here, we don't find any high rise building. It's a town... very quiet town. Perhaps because I came on a Saturday morning. Definitely, the vast green areas would have attributed to the silence one would enjoy....