One of our longest days yet started out at Vrije Universiteit, where we got a tour of the campus. We walked around two of their main buildings and the outside of the campus, getting to see study spaces, the dining hall, the cultural center and classrooms. Compared to Pittsburgh’s campus, it was very similar in the sense that it was compact and in one area, not spread out throughout the city like many other universities in Amsterdam. Another notable difference is that tuition is significantly cheaper here than in the US, most likely to draw students to get bachelors degrees. It was cool to see how many international students go there, and how easy it would be to get home to the US, which piqued my interest about potentially looking into a program like VU’s one day. We then walked into the business district, where we got lunch at market 33, which had options from ten different cultures and was delicious.

We then traveled to Schipol Airport to get a company tour with KLM. There we got to learn about the process of checking the planes to ensure everything is in check through testing engines, looking at parts within and even remodeling the planes. We got to walk in an actual plane that was being renovated and walk down to get a real perspective of the massive plane. While in the hangar, we learned about the daily check in’s and routines the engineers have to go through and we got to go in the control room for the testing of the engines. While I am not an engineering student, I appreciate learning about the behind the scenes of these planes that we take for granted. We also discussed how they are able to remodel the plane in whatever way makes them the most profit. For example, when less first class tickets were selling, they took that section out and added more economy and business class. It is interesting to see all the tactics businesses use in order to optimize profit.  

Our last destination was a cultural center in Amsterdam called Pukhuis de Zwijger where we were served delicious Moroccan food. The salad, couscous and vegetable stew were all very good and I enjoyed the meal. We then headed upstairs to a sustainable cities lecture. They discussed wanting to create a more sustainable economy. From my understanding, they failed to mention how they were going to implement this in the future and simply talked about annexing capitalism. While their ideas were good, there was just not much plan to back that up. Overall, today was a long, packed and eventful day.