It’s almost the end of the trip! Everything went by super fast and I cannot believe it is almost at its close. Today and tomorrow are definitely lighter days compared to before, so the blog posts will be a lot shorter than before. As usual, I had breakfast at the generator, filling me up ahead of a nice and bright day out in Amsterdam (an absolute rarity that). Together with everyone else, I walked down towards Universiteit van Amsterdam, which was right by the CREA building I visited the very first day or so. When we got there, we were all greeted by two tour guides, in which we were all split up in half. My tour guide was a German international, who actually grew up in Hamburg (and also a boyhood HSV fan over local rivals St. Pauli so bonus points)! Lately, I have really wanted to pursue study abroad opportunities in Germany and specifically Hamburg, so I was able to ask him loads of questions about it. Fun fact: Hamburg has the most bridges of any city, even more than Amsterdam, which I found extremely hard to believe. He said the city is very much like Amsterdam and that a major reason why he went abroad from Germany is that he does not like other German locals. Additionally, The Netherlands is a far better English-speaking country than Germany, another detail I found very surprising as I always thought Germany was the most culturally similar to America. Nonetheless, it was very reassuring in my future European desires especially in a different location than here in Amsterdam.

The tour itself was very cool as we got to walk around many of the buildings. The newer buildings at the university cleared those at Pittsburgh, it was absolutely incredible and a sight to behold for me. After the tour, I made my way back to Centraal Station once more, this time for another canal cruise. This canal cruise was actually our first in Amsterdam itself, and we went through the city in one giant loop there. Throughout the cruise, there were definitely some familiar sights in the city, but exploring various new neighborhoods was nice. Once the cruise finished, I was on my own from 3:00 onward. The victory laps finally began from here, and this chapter is almost finished!