Live session in Grachtenmuseum Amsterdam

Many students who choose Flowently for learning Dutch are keen travelers and appreciate the alternation of online with live, cultural sessions. So does David. He is interested in history, culture, art and sports. So we chose to visit the Grachtenmuseum Amsterdam which is dedicated to 400 years of Amsterdam canal history.

Audio tour in Dutch!

The multimedia exhibition tells the story of the ring of canals, one of the most impressive urban expansions in the world. What David did not yet know is that Amsterdam was built entirely on stilts. He found the demonstration of the foundation on piles utterly fascinating as well as the multimedia display of the city council meeting in 1613 with the mayor and the architect in which the important decision was made for the city expansion. The garden of this historical building is also magnificent and well worth a visit.

Benefits and challenges of an Art Session, David says….

• The audiovisual tour in Dutch was the biggest challenge, but really good for my listening skills!
• The cultural, live session is a good, constructive change from working with the books
• You can put into practice what you have learned and it inspires to try new words
• You can apply your conversational skills in the oral debrief using your notes as required.
• I also needed pen and paper for part of the session to better record what I saw.

Heel interessant, leuk, gezellig en comfortabel!

Around the corner from the Herengracht in one of the 9 streets, we pop into the authentic brown-wooded pub De Doffer for the post-session discussion while enjoying a drink with the typically old-Dutch snack board, het borrelplankje in Dutch: Osseworst, cubes of cheese and pickles with pearl onions and mustard. We talk for another half an hour about the exhibition and Davids conclusion in a nutshell was: Heel interessant, leuk, gezellig en comfortabel!

By Nathalie Ezendam Keller

Would you also like to understand and learn more adjectives like ‘gezellig’, ‘interessant’, ‘comfortabel?’ Download your free pdf of ‘Learn Dutch on the Go’ and take a look at the pages with adjectives to improve your conversational skills.