Author: Graham Umlauf

Going to church today in Dresden helped me realize how traditional church is here. You go in, don’t communicate a whole lot, follow a strict setup (singing hymns, passage readings, the message, and so forth). One thing that I noticed, at least it seemed to me, is that the members do not appear to be happy. Or at least they show hardly any emotion. They were not smiling much and no one got super into the hymns. They were very unemotional. With that said, the church was beautiful. And maybe it was a somber message, but I don’t know since they spoke German the whole time! Attending this church and the one the previous week in France has helped me realize how happy I am to have songs rather than hymnals.

We started the day off with a tour at Vermeer. It wasn’t as much of a tour as it was an informational session with Jaap. He was very impressive; he was in operations, finance, and IT throughout his career, and from my understanding, did well in each area. He loves data and making data relevant to make decisions.

Vermeer started with Gary Vermeer. He was a farmer and had an extreme passion for farming and advancing tactics. He hated having to bail hay, and ended up creating a successful prototype that would bail hay in the big circles instead of smaller rectangles. By doing this, you could leave the hay out and the rain would not ruin it, unlike the rectangular bails. His neighbors saw what he had created and they wanted a machine as well. So, he ended up creating these machines for them and realized that he was a manufacturer.

He and his newfound company never looked back. They started making items such as woodchippers, directional drills, stump cutters and so forth. He was a very innovative man, and his company grew tremendously as a result. They currently (according to Jaap) have a net worth of a little over a billion dollars. They have plants in Iowa, China, Latin America, the Netherlands, and Asia Specific. So, they are a very large and innovative company, who continues to have success.

The Maeslantkering is a storm surge barrier on the Nieuwe Watereg, in South Holland, Netherlands. It is controlled by a supercomputer, and automatically closes when Rotterdam is threatened by floods. It is one of largest moving structures on Earth. The main purpose of this barrier is not to control the water, but rather to slow the waves/break the force of the waves.

There are two large floating gates on both dikes of the waterway. The construction of these dikes started in 1991 and it took six years to build the 22 meter high and 210 meter long steel gates. Due to the size of these gates, they take two hours to close. Although they are only expected to need to be closed once every ten years, they are very worth it. The efficiency of them to prevent catastrophic flooding is vital to the Netherlands. Without the barriers, mass destruction and death could occur.

The Netherlands also employ natural tactics to help prevent flooding. An example of this is deploying sand a decent way into shore and using this sand to ease the waves and to help lead to dunes being created. The dunes will act as natural barriers to the threatening waters. Another cool fact is that the storm surge barriers are painted white in order to reflect the sun so that they don’t contract due to the heat.