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Hello and welcome back to Oosterdam Day 10! I’m on a train, uh, Again, heading back from Utrecht Centraal. Today we went to visit a promising start-up called Aurea Imaging in Utrecht to take a closer look at the future of drone technology and how it’s being used to increase crop yield and maximize profits for farmers everywhere. The farming cycle consists of five or six key stages which occur over the course of four seasons. Around spring, during the growing season, a drone is sent through the orchards for an aerial view of the entire farm. It records everything it sees, mapping out the trees and taking photos that will later be sent back to Aurea for analysis. The experts there are able to identify key characteristics like flower density, growth “intensity”, and root breadth underground (somehow, I have no idea). The farmers are thus able to scope out individual trees or sections of trees that aren’t up to standard and tend to them separately using machinery as opposed to fertilizing/watering/treating the entire orchard. This allows for increased consistency and overall greater output. It also saves a great deal of time and money. This is quite frankly, a genius application of drone technology—I never thought it’d be used this way. I’m not sure if it would work on a larger scale, like the farms we have back in the States, but the idea certainly has potential. We were able to tour the offices and have lunch there, both of which were superlative. The working environment is much more open and collaborative than the caricature of being confined to a cubicle back in the States. I wish this company much success in the future.
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Afterward we had little more to do, so our tour guide Sophia showed us around Utrecht and let us loose to do as we pleased. We visited the state house, the “tall building” under construction (some government building; if I remember correctly I’m pretty sure it sets the height limit in the city, so no other building can be taller than it), and the nearby cathedral. After walking around for a while longer, we were turned loose upon the city. I know some girls rented out some bikes, but my group and I wanted to tour the little boutiques and restaurants in the area. We went to a jewelry store, a yarn store, another jewelry store, a few clothes stores, etc. etc. But the highlight of the day was the MUSIC store we visited just in time before closing. We’d never seen such an extensive score store (heh.), with shelves on either side stacked high with sheet music for instruments of all kinds. I snagged a gift for a close friend of mine back at home (it was PERFECT, I saw it and literally started jumping up and down out of sheer excitement) and in the process of looking for some David Lanz, I found Joe Hisaishi instead! Joe Hisaishi is incredibly famous for his involvement in the Studio Ghibli franchise, a company that makes animated movies. These are my childhood movies, and these songs mean a lot to me. I’ve been playing music from Studio Ghibli for as long as I can remember, but always with the thought in the back of my mind that I’m not playing the “real thing”, just random arrangements from various musicians around the world. This book I stumbled across was the real thing. And yes, it might’ve been a little pricey, and yes, I might’ve been able to get it on Amazon for like, ⅔ of the price, but now I can say I got the music in a cute little shop in Amsterdam. It’s all about the experience, eh? I can’t wait to play this back at home on my keyboard. To close things out, we found a spot outside to sit and enjoy some…juice…before boarding a train and heading back to Amsterdam.
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I have to do some packing now, but I’d like to leave you with today’s Dutch-ism of the day: thuis is waar je hart ligt, or “home is where the heart is.” I saw it on an advertisement board, so enjoy the free Dutch propaganda. Apologies for this blog being shorter than usual—it’s also a little rushed, so it doesn’t flow well in some places. Either way, I enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as well. Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll see you tomorrow.