Today started out with a visit to the University van (of) Amsterdam (UVA) business campus. The campus had many beautiful modern buildings but, like many campuses in the US, also had some older buildings mixed in. Also similar to Pitt and other campuses I have visited, there seemed to be an abundance of construction. While loud and sometimes inconvenient, it is what helps keep the campus feeling modern. For example, even the older looking buildings at UVA felt modern on the inside as they clearly have continued to work on them. Being on the canal is a neat feeling but even cooler than the water, in my opinion, is walking out of any one of their campus buildings onto the city streets of Amsterdam.

The campus visit displayed once again just how important and engrained in Dutch culture bikes are. The sidewalks surrounding the campus were covered with bikes. This is in addition to the enormous bike parking garages they have built into the university buildings. The student from the university showing us around even explained that bike culture is the reason stairs throughout Amsterdam are weird. He said people designing the roads and walkways think of bikes first creating ramps before the stairs. This causes the stairs to be odd heights and lengths because they were more of an afterthought.

Another cultural difference that came up again today was the incredibly low cost of college here compared to the US. This school had $2,000 tuition for all EU students, not just Dutch residents. Those outside of the EU would have to pay $20,000, still much less than most colleges in the US. When we told the student showing us around what the cost of college is in the states he was stunned to silence for a minute. He said he could not understand what more colleges in the US could offer that justify that much higher price. UVA does not offer meal plans and there is no on-campus housing but these do not nearly account for this cost difference. The fact that there is no on-campus housing means that students live in the city and are forced to experience Amsterdam as a whole unlike Pitt students who can stay in Oakland for everything they need. I think this is interesting though I am not sure if I would prefer it over the way Pitt is.

After the college visit, we went on a canal tour and looked at the houses on the canal. During the tour, we learned that because of extremely high costs, most of these buildings are no longer homes but businesses. What really intrigued me was why the houses looked the way they do. We learned that the houses were made to showcase the owners’ wealth so windows at the top were smaller so that the house would look bigger than it actually was.

Today I got a stroopwafel and after talking to the man at the vendor, I learned that stroopwafels are waffles with caramel in between. There are some variations with honey or other sweets between the waffles but those are technically no longer considered stroopwafels. That is why today’s word of the day is karamel which, as you might guess, means caramel.