10 february 2005

Thankfully the intro period has ended. Now everyone has started classes, except for me. The one course I planned to take turns out to be independent laboratory work, and when I contacted the professor to see if I could join, he responded in a whole page of complicated Dutch. The general message was: no.

So mostly I’m continuing my Dutch studies and reading for my thesis. I’ve learned lots of good Dutch design words: opzet, bebouwingstypologieen, vogelvlucht (layout, building typologies, bird’s eye view).

I found the most fantastic book about IJburg, the new city district I am researching. It is a series of islands that is being built in the middle of the water to accommodate the growing population. They are just building the land, out of sand. Building land is so commonplace to the Dutch that it is hard to find books about it, but I have been thorough. I’ve scoured architecture bookshops, historical museum shops, and the Amsterdam Municipal Archives. Once in a while as I am scanning a shelf I come upon a find like Amsterdam Planning 1928-2003, and I jump giddily and pull it off the shelf. The shopkeeper looks up suspiciously.

But my best find so far was the book about IJburg, called Zeven miljoen kuub zand – seven million cubic metres of sand, the amount it took to build phase one of IJburg. It is a photographic record of the first islands’ emergence, peppered with semi-technical explanations in Dutch and also, thankfully, in English.

Next I will tackle Diemerzeedijk: Zand Erover, Sand Across the Diemer Sea Dike. This one’s just in Dutch. Luckily my brain always reads foreign languages long, long before being able to hear or speak them. So with my trusty New Routledge dictionary I think I will be able to glean at least some key information about the Diemerzeedijk, even though at this point I still get stumped at the part of the grocery store transaction where the clerk asks if I want a receipt.