Today we got to visit inHolland’s Rotterdam campus. After a short tram ride across the city we were greeted with a very modern building. Here you will find the programs for business, law and finance in inHollands school of applied sciences. We started with a tour given by three faculty members of the college which was much more interesting than I anticipated.

They started the tour by with comparing Rotterdam to Amsterdam, have you been to both cities you would know that they are not similar at all. This goes back to World War II where 85% of Rotterdam was destroyed due to bombings. Today if you find yourself walking around you could easily distinguish which building survived the war. One of them was a building that would be the start and end of the transAtlantic journey from The Netherlands to New York City. Today it serves as a hotel and restaurant but it is one of the very few that remain. A reason as to why it was not destroyed was because it seemed to be a popular place for German soldiers during WWII to meet.

This is where the two cities begin to separate. Amsterdam saw very little bombings which allowed for its historic architecture to remain standing while Rotterdam as mentioned before was basically destroyed to rubble. This meant Rotterdam had to be rebuilt but now everything being built was in the mindset of modern society. You will find much taller buildings, more modern housing, and more cars. Rotterdam is still walkable and you can easily bike or use public transportation but you notice that all roads for cars tend to be paved or at least suitable to be driven over. In Amsterdam you would see cars driving in narrow streets bouncing from side to side from the uneven cobblestone road. I learned that Rotterdam is essentially an Architect’s playground. Here you find buildings with interesting designs throughout the city which can be moved around quite easily. The reason behind this is the soil in which the foundations are built on. In many places across The Netherlands especially in Rotterdam the soil is very soft, looking at it you could describe it as sand like. For example the sidewalks are made from different kinds of bricks, which are simply placed in a pattern along the path.

Something we learned about that happens in Rotterdam and believe should be taken more seriously everywhere considering the feedback of the population. You do not want to create a park that no one uses due to a problem or create projects that do not fit the needs of the nearby residents. Doing this you can confident create new projects knowing that it will be utilized especially in areas where space is very limited. This could be brought back to the idea of concept to consumer. You could think about a project as a product being sold, although it won’t be sold for a straight profit but the project will attract new people and create a better neighborhood thus increasing the wealth of the city and area. More people move in to create the flow of goods, this helps an economy grow. Therefore it is really important for whoever is creating these projects to take in the wants and needs of the people who will be using them.

For the second part of our trip to inHolland we got to step inside the campus building to explore a little and learn more about the school itself. Walking in you notice everything is very modern and it does not feel as if it is a college but rather a business building. We were given a presentation about the school and I noticed a couple similarities and differences when compared to Pitt. Here the classroom sizes are much smaller, they tend to be at a max of 30 students per class, whereas in Pitt the class sizes can vary greatly and can even be in the hundreds at times. Just like the Delft campus, the Rotterdam campus is more hands-on and students do many projects. They do spend time in the classroom listening to lectures etc.. But towards the end of a student’s time in college some might spend only 10 hours a week in class doing the traditional work and allocate some time for their projects. This is a huge difference compared to Pitt where I feel the majority of the time learning is done in lecture style classes, and the most hands-on work tends to be in clubs and internships/Co-ops. Both have multiple campuses, although Pitt has a larger one and a bunch of smaller campuses that follow. While in Holland it is more consistent with the size of its campuses.

We then took a small quiz to test our knowledge of the Netherlands which was a pretty cool thing to see how much I learned although like half of the stuff there was stuff I don’t remember talking about. Following that we were done with all planned events so some of us took the opportunity to travel to The Hague. Here you will find the governmental buildings of the Netherlands and it is overall a beautiful city to visit. One thing I found very cool were the thriststores, I’m not much of a shopper but if one person went in then the entire group followed. In the first one we found many American clothes and brands ranging from sports jerseys to colleges. The other thrift store was much cooler because compared to normal stores where clothes would have a price attached to them, here the amount you paid was based on how much the clothes weighed. The pricing scale was 30 Euro for 1 Kg. I’m curious if there are any benefits in pricing stuff this way. After a walk around The Hague we visited the Noordeinde Palace, which is one of the three palaces of the Dutch family. Due to the rain we couldn’t visit much but I believe we saw a good amount of The Hague today.

Unfortunately our time here is almost done. Tomorrow is our last day where we get to visit the floating farm. Until then I’ll enjoy most of what we have left. See ya.