We had an organized free day today, so it was pretty relaxing! Today, we visited Ij-Hallen, which is the largest vintage market in Europe! To get here, we took the metro and then got on a ferry. I’m continuously impressed with the public transport in and around The Netherlands. It was a short walk to the metro and then we boarded the ferry, but the metro conveniently dropped us very close to the ferry. It took us a fairly short period of time to get to the market, and it was entirely by public transportation! Not to mention, the ferry was free, which is definitely a plus. This is another example of the presence of sustainability in Amsterdam. Public transportation is convenient, easy to use, reliable, and it isn’t too costly.
The market was filled with vintage jewelry, bags, purses, furniture, and a wide variety of clothing items! Anything you could think of buying was available. There were also vintage cameras, mirrors, and many homemade items. It was really fun to get to walk through all of the different vendor stands, a lot of the items were really unique! It was definitely the largest flea market that I’ve ever been to, there were so many options! While I didn’t end up personally buying anything, I had a lot of fun getting to explore the different unique items that were displayed.
It was also interesting to observe the business strategies behind the transactions taking place in the market. Specifically, “bargaining”. When you went to purchase an item, the seller would give you a price, and sometimes people would counter with a lower price, in an attempt to spend less. This strategy definitely worked for a few people in our group, and I find it really interesting that some sellers are open to bargaining.
After our visit to Ij-Hallen, we traveled to a restaurant for a social event with Pitt alumni who are now living in Amsterdam. Not only was this a great networking opportunity, but it was also a great opportunity to learn more about what it’s like living in The Netherlands and what opportunities we might have as Pitt students, to have more abroad experiences. It was especially interesting to speak to one of the alumni, Christina, about her career path from majoring in chemistry to working as a marketing manager. As someone who is pursuing a technical degree with an interest in business, it was great to have the opportunity to hear about her own experiences with this career path. One of her takeaways from her own career path is a great lesson to understand, and that is that our lives and our careers are very unpredictable. Often, it’s impossible to know where we’ll be in the next couple of years, which is why it’s so important to be able to adapt well to change, and to be flexible in our career mindsets. It was so interesting to hear about the alumni’s experiences abroad as well, and how they’ve adapted to working in a new country.
After a day at the vintage market and networking with alumni, we headed back to the hostel. A few people from our group went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant, which was very good! Tomorrow, we’ll travel to visit a university and tour their engineering buildings, and we’ll visit the Schiphol airport!