We’re here!
Travel to get to the Netherlands was thankfully very smooth. The worst the flights had was a bit of turbulence and an incredibly loud baby, but once we landed we hit the ground running! After dropping off ours bags at the hotel, we had a super quick breakfast and met the city through a canal tour. It was a very soothing way to be introcuded to the dancing houses and history of the city, even while everyone was fighting off sleep from the 10 hour commute. Once the tour ended, we went right into a walking tour and a very interesting chocolate company visit. The owner of the chocolate company told us about how her store is helping to revitalize the red-light district of Amsterdam and make it more socially sustainable and palatable. This project opened her eyes to new lifestyles after working with the people in said district, something that I found very touching and inspiring.
We saw more of the dancing houses in the scavnger hunt we did to explore the city, but we first learned why they are called that on our canal and walking tours. When Amsterdam was first built, all the houses were built on stilts because the city is below sea level. Over time, these wooden supports have deteriorated over time, causing the houses to lean from side to side. In the picture above, you can see wall added in to the gap created by a building leaning to prevent any furhter damage from occuring. Since then, the city has changed to builting supports with concrete.
Our second day was thankfully much more relaxed, letting us adjused to the timezone and environment more. Our tour guide, Enno, gave us a scavenger hunt to explore the city on our own. Following clues, we got to see the goregous architecture, delicious food, vibrant community, and the city has to offer. With our following free time, my friends and I got to see some more of the local activitites the city got to offer!
Exploring the city, we went to a photography art gallery at FOAM, a stroopwafle corner store, and the Miffy store ( a store full of super cute bunny plushes designed in Holland). It was a bit of a timecrunch, but we were able to enjoy the exhibit, grab our souveniors, and make it back to the group with our stroopwafles in time for our next industry tour.
I found the FOAM exhibit “War is Personal” by Julia Kochetova, a Ukrainian journalist documenting her experience of the war between Ukraine and Russian. It was extremely moving, and was an important reminder of how lucky we all are to have lives unburnded by needless violence that now permeates her life. The exhibit showed leters Kochetova wrote that I would suggest reading as they struck me deeply and served an important realtity check despite the struggles we have every day. Please consider reading more about her important work in Ukraine here.
After our free time, we toured the Netherlands based jean company House of Denim. There, they gave us a brief history of how jeans used to be made, explaining that in the past it would take 7000 liters of water to create one pair of jeans. It would then take an additional 3500 liters to alter the jeans with different wash types, leading to an incredibly unsustainable business model. House of Denim worked with other companies such as Jeanology to innovate on this problem, working with alternative methods of cotton creation, rock washing, and design & rip creation through the use of various machines. These methods brough the previous 7000 liters of water down to only 600 liters per single pair of jeans. While the technology is increidble effective and easy to use in comparision to old methods, we were told it has been challenge to implement on a large scale due to the heavy initial costs, even though it would save money for companies down the line
I thought the lazer demonstration was very cool! The entire company felt like a very healthy breeding ground for creativity and innovation, creating a very nice environment to work in.
Even with these two days being difficult because of the travel exhaustion and jetlag, everything has been super fun to explore and learn more about! I feel very lucky to be here and already know I want to come back to see more of Amsterdam after we leave for Enschede. I’m excited for what tomorrow with bring!