This morning, around 5:30 local time, or 11:30pm back home, we landed the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. Most of the group (including me) didn’t sleep much on the plane so we were all very tired on arrival, which led to me not taking in my surroundings as readily. Despite this, I did notice differences in the Dutch culture rather quickly. The first cultural difference I noticed was the need for efficiency. When were were going through customs, the security agent scolded the group for not keeping the line moving and acted surprised to see us not moving as soon as the person in front of us moved ahead. Although the security agents in U.S. airport often yell at travelers, I don’t think they are often surprised by peoples’ lack of a sense of urgency.

After travelling through customs, we waited at the airport until 8:00am for our tour guide, Raha, to pick us up. We took the incredibly quiet and smooth train to our hotel and dropped our bags of there. The train reminded me a lot of the trains in Switzerland, because of their cleanliness and the fact that there are many apartment complexes and offices along the train routes. In the U.S. people typically want to be away from the train lines because of the noise, but here people want to be as close to the train as possible to make it easy to get around. We couldn’t get into our rooms yet because check-in was at 3:00, so after we dropped our bags off we did a scavenger hunt around Amsterdam. This was a great introduction to the city, but tiring because of the jetlag, so many of us just wanted to sleep. While doing the scavenger hunt, I noticed how many bicyclists there were in the city. This didn’t surprise me because I had learned about how common it is for people to use bikes in Amsterdam. I was surprised, however, by how few cars there were in the city. Most of the roads were being walked on instead of driven on. I found this very fascinating and think this is likely due to Amsterdam being designed for bikes instead of cars, which discourages people from driving.

After this we headed back to the hotel and checked in. Most of us took naps and showers before heading out to dinner later. We took the metro to the center of Amsterdam to get to the restaurant. Being able to use the public transportation to get in and out of the city so easily made me realize just how bad the public transportation is in the United States.

Today was a very exciting yet tiring day, and I am looking forward to getting a good night’s rest and starting the day tomorrow. I can’t wait to spend the next 2 weeks here in the Netherlands!