"Lelystad - Home of the "Uiver"" a Lelystad Travel Page by Airpunk

Since I visited the Netherlands for the first time on my own in 2004, I have spent some time in Lelystad’s Aviodrome every year. But it wasn’t until 2007 when I started to pay a visit to other parts of the town too. Most notably is the area at Lelystad Haven which includes the open-air shopping center Bataviastad, the historic shipyard Bataviawerf and the museum Nieuw Land Erfgoedcentrum. But although all these attractions are worth a visit, my own favourite remains the Aviodrome. It is the home of the Uiver, one of the two last flying DC-2s and symbol for one of the most glorious moments in the Netherlands of the early 20th century.

Lelystad is an artificial city, built from the early 1980s on. It was supposed to be center of the Nieuw Land, the land won by draining the Zuiderzee and creating so-called polders. But as the last polder, the Markerwaard polder was not realized, the city’s position became quite remote. So, it did only grow veryl slowly while Almere, a city located close to Amsterdam, grew to a size which is almost three times that of today’s Lelystad. Lelystad was named after the initiator of Zuiderzee works projects, the engineer Cornelis Lely. It has around 70 000 inhabitants.

In the early summer of 1996, it was mandatory for the twelth grade of our school to do a so-called study-trip. The trip should have been related to one of the two main subjects everybody had. As my main subjects were french and chemistry and no trip to France was offered, I had free choice! I went with the biology guys and girls on a sailing trip over the Ijsselmeer. Of course, it wasn’t only sun and fun, we also had to give a presentation about a different theme. I was given the theme “Zuiderzeewerke” – land reclamation in the Ijsselmeer, together with a friend. 11 years later, I came back to the place to check out what was done on this new land I was once talking about.