Today we took a visit to the InHolland location of Rotterdam. We met up at 9:15 and took a quick tram ride over to the building for the College of Applied Sciences where we met up with our three guides of the day, all faculty of InHolland Rotterdam.
We were shown around some of this part of the city, a portion that we have not had the opportunity to see very much since arriving in Rotterdam. We started off walking around looking at some of the architectural marvels here in the more modern of Rotterdam. Our first stop was at the Erasmusbrug, a massive modern bridge that actually is capable of turning itself open to allow for large boats to get through the river.
As we moved to the next stop on our tour, a few of my fellow accounting majors and I noticed a large building labeled with Deloitte. It’s so interesting to think that even 3,900 miles from Pittsburgh, Deloitte was still right in our backyard.
We walked a bit further down the street to come to an old-school hotel, very out of place in this modern city. The side of the building read “Hotel New York”, which initially I thought was a little silly because we were obviously not in New York. One of our guides later explained the historical significance of this building. Thousands of emigrants would stay here in advance of their voyage to North America via ships owned by the Holland America Line, which also owned the hotel.
Rotterdam was about 85% destroyed by the end of WWII, but this building was left standing because German troops took a particular liking to it and would stay there when in the area. It’s great that this beautiful hotel has been reclaimed and is now in full operation, a great testament to the past.
Our guides then showed us around an urban planned park that had some simple grass spots and drainage underneath to lessen groundwater. We then travelled down the river and saw some sustainable housing that is listed on Airbnb. The guides explained to us some more of the urban planning, some large-scale parks. I was particularly interested by the beach that is planned to be next some planned skyscrapers to be added to the skyline. Though I don’t think it will be a very popular beach, it is a very interesting for which the result will certainly be interesting.
That essentially concluded our tour, and we headed over to the building for the College of Applied Sciences for a lecture on how InHolland programs work in terms of enrollment, degrees, acceptance, cost, etc. We learned a lot about how college works here in the Netherlands, and I thought it was especially interesting that public universities for EU residents in the Netherlands can be as inexpensive as €2,200 for a year of school.
We finished off the day with a quiz on our Netherlands knowledge, and I honestly impressed myself with how well I knew many of the things. Overall, the day was very productive and I learned a lot more of the history of this beautiful place. I’m excited to see how the urban planning projects in the interest of sustainability pan out here over the next few years to help achieve the 2030 goals that Rotterdam has set for itself.