Today our group took up most of the day travelling to the Dutch city of Utrecht for a company visit. The company we visited in Utrecht Aurea imaging, utilizes drones to survey and manage farms. Aurea imaging’s office is located in a business park of Utrecht that host a wide variety of startup companies. We first sat through a presentation of what Aurea imaging specifically does. Our tour guide stated how their drones help farmers to identify dying and sick plants on their harvests. Through drone imaging and mapping, Aurea imaging will come up with a report on the costumer’s harvest and suggest options to fix dead and dying plants and materials. I was extremely fascinated by this presentation because I had never heard of or seen drone mapping of this level before. Normally, in the United States the only drone use I have experienced has either been private drone flying from individuals, or military use. Therefore, it was extremely interesting to learn about Aurea imaging and how they are changing the farming industry with their drone technology. Also, we were able to see the business park around Aurea imaging. I was extremely surprised find that the park had a cafeteria filled with healthy and delicious food. The building also had an extremely modern gym filled with up-to-date workout equipment. This provides an example of how the European workplace values comfort and relaxation, something that many American companies do not.

The second part of the day in Utrecht saw us go on a tour of the town. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Utrecht and found it to be a lovely place. It seemed to have a large University influence in the places that we visited. Walking through the campus’s, we saw many small food and clothing shops. On the chain of concept to consumer, these shops are specifically tailored to one consumer’s needs, college students. We stopped at one of these small shops for some local ice cream which was very good. We also saw an old church in the city center of Utrecht. I was amazed while walking through the church to see the complicated architecture and design work that went into constructing the church. What amazed me even more is how people were able to build these churches in the time they did with access to extremely limited resources and materials. We then ended the day with a trip back to the train station of Utrecht and headed back to Amsterdam.