Yesterday I took a day trip to visit the opening of Volgermeer Polder just north of Amsterdam, which I had been invited to attend by the Head of Landscape Architecture at Delft University.
So, what is a polder?
A polder is a low-lying tract of land enclosed by embankments (barriers) known as dikes, that forms an artificial hydrological entity, meaning it has no connection with outside water other than through manually-operated devices. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder)
It turned out to be one of those “the journey is more important than the destination” days. In Amsterdam I caught a bus in the wrong direction, good start! Then when I climbed on board a bus headed in the right direction my public transport card was out of funds ... great. The bus driver was very friendly, could obviously tell I was learning things the hard way, and allowed me to travel that part of the journey for free. At the end of this 20 minute bus ride I had to try to reload my public transport card ... sounds easy, especially when I was able to find the appropriate machine in a supermarket foyer. The catch is they don’t take Mastercard. Right. Slightly disoriented by the mornings proceedings I went to an ATM thinking taking out some money would fix my problems, then I realised this was useless as there was no way to get the money on the card.
So, I just bought a daily ticket, to the price of 9 Euro, about $13. Expensive hey! This wasn’t the biggest challenge of the day, I still had another small bus ride and walk. The 6 minute bus ride was fine. After arriving at the town of Broeke en Waterland I only had to walk 50m to eat my packed lunch (bread, dip and a muesli bar) whilst beholding a picturesque Dutch agricultural scene. A vast, endless horizon of grass, some cows, canals and farmhouses ... oh, and clear blue skies.
Then, where to next?
I had been given directions by the receptionist at the hostel I was staying. A map showing the walk from the hostel to the first bus stop (it didn’t show the direction of travel which caused the first mishap), a series of bus transfers and a map showing the walk from the last bus stop to my destination. Now, I rarely get lost whilst travelling ... perhaps the result of having to find my way through the thick willow trees along Brandy Creek in Gippsland. BUT I had made a critical mistake of not checking the receptionists information with GoogleMaps which I usually rely on. So, when I pull out the map I have no idea which way to go because there’s no scale and I find it hard to read the path of the sun in the northern hemisphere. The smart thing to do would have been to ask someone, but you know how it is ...
So I walked a couple of kilometres through this picturesque Dutch landscape on a perfect sunny day, eventually winding up in the next town. The turn-off I was looking for never “appeared”. This walk was not in vein however because a 100 metres off the next town two huge eagles took flight from the paddock in front of me, they circled and circled and circled, being chased by smaller crows and spreading their grand, graceful wings. At this point I still wasn’t sure I was “lost”, so I took the chance to ask a boy waiting on the side of the road, after a minute his mum came to pick him so she checked the directions on her satellite navigation system The answer was short, go back to the town I had come from and ask someone. Hmm, that would have been easy the first time BUT I wouldn’t have seen the eagles.
I walked back, asked for directions from locals and finally found my destination. I had missed the presentation and formalities but as soon as I had been to the bathroom a young Australian guy introduced himself. This is part of the reason for coming, he is originally from Geelong and has been working at the firm responsible for this project for the last 6 years. “Let’s jump on a cart”, he says. We walk outside and to the end of a “red carpet” where a horse and carriage was waiting to take us for a tour of the 100 acre site. Wow, that’s service!
So we jumped on boarded and took a loop through the polder landscape. My new Australian friend told me all about the site’s history, from its form as a marshland 10,000 years ago, to being drained for agriculture around the year 1000, peat extraction for fuel from the 1920s to 1950s, this formed a big hole which eventually became a rubbish dump. So the most recent transformation involved the rehabilitation of this toxic landscape into a recreation park. As we ride around I’m clicking away with my camera as I had been all day, before I realised the memory card wasn’t in the camera. I had left it in my computer after downloading some photos onto my blog for Kate. I couldn’t do anything but smile and enjoy the ride.
Volgermeer Polder opening LINK
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