Bergen op Zoom (called Berrege in the local dialect) is a municipality and a city located in the south of the Netherlands.
The city was built on a place where two types of soil meet: sandy soil and marine clay. The sandy soil pushed against the marine clay, accumulating and forming hills over several centuries. People called those hills the Brabantse Wal, literally meaning "ramparts of Brabant". Zoom refers to the border of these ramparts and bergen in Dutch means mountains or hills. The name has nothing to do with the little channel, the ‘Zoom’, which was later built through Bergen op Zoom.
