Today marked my official tour of TU Delft, and I’m proud to announce that I will be continuing my athletic and academic careers here for the next three years! Jokes aside, today we toured TU Delft, and it was a very enjoyable experience for a few reasons.

The first reason was the Greenvillage, a part of the campus that used to have the architecture faculty, but which sadly burned downed due a faulty coffee machine. The university turned this large lot of land into an area where students and startups could pitch innovative sustainable ideas for construction and infrastructure purposes. If the ideas were approved, they were built and tested here. We saw a lot of interesting and innovative ideas, such as moss on roofs, systems for natural heating, cooperation with wildlife to take care of crops, recycling materials for construction, and cheapening construction, along with many other things. Some cool designs that specifically intrigued me were mini-hydrogen depots where they were making hydrogen gas through electrolysis of water for small scale use. Another interesting design was the use of sand and cow manure to create bricks that could be easily assembled. Overall, having such an applied experimental area on campus where ideas can get built and tested over a long period of time, then be further improved along with help from the university, seemed like a very persuasive and exciting potential opportunity for students.

Second, the campus and facilities were extremely nice. The first thing we saw while walking into the campus was the greenery and forests all around the campus, and it added a real character and liveliness to the campus. Secondly, the athletic facilities were incredible, and I mean genuinely shocking. The buildings were nice, had lots of outdoor views, and had a lot of glass. On the negative side, the food that we had could have been one of the worse cafeterias on campus because it was pretty bad. I also bought a nice t-shirt for less price than the Pitt shop, so an added bonus.

Additionally, we participated in a workshop where we built a collage through connecting causes and effects of climate change, and it really taught me a lot about specifics that I didn’t think about. More importantly, it truly showed the big picture and how many small issues truly cause and further aggravate each other.

Finally, we explored Delft itself, and really enjoyed the entire atmosphere of the city. It looked like a smaller version of Amsterdam, and it had some extremely modern and innovative cuisine as well. Moral of the story, Hail to Pitt, but I like TUD as well.