Tag: curiosity

once, on a US mini-roadtrip, we passed by a sign on the highway saying “great continental divide”. i googled it and found out that there’s a sort of line, west of which the water flows to the pacific ocean, and east to the atlantic ocean. it was obvious, but somehow i had never thought of it, and it blew my mind! to think that 2 drops of water, hitting the ground a couple of meters apart could end up in two different sides of the country, thousands of miles apart? just… wow.

it’s no secret i love roadtrips, but i think what i like the most in them is actually this kind of random little things – the unexpected curiosities that you only notice because you’re in a new place and everything is foreign. so when we were researching for our bavaria roadtrip last april, i noticed by chance that we would drive across the european watershed drainage divide: the one separating the rhine from the danube… i knew I wanted to see that!

i knew more or less where it would be, but in the end we ended up noticing it by accident, while driving by. i made us turn around to get a proper photo:

and there it is, so unassuming, yet so significant! on one side of this line, water flows into the rhine drainage basin, ending up in the atlantic, off the coast of the netherlands. on the other, the water will eventually join the danube, crossing 10 countries until it finally arrives on the black sea.

so cool! :)