On our final day here in Amsterdam we attended a lecture by Tony Chocolonely and visited their superstore in the downtown area. The lecture from Tony Chocolonely’s representative joke, was extremely insightful. She specifically described the company’s goal that was to produce top level chocolate while avoiding child labor and practicing sustainable production. Joke also…

Today our group travelled to the University of Amsterdam’s business school for a tour. When I first saw this on the schedule, I was unsure of how much I would learn from this visit, being an engineer. However, there were many things that was able to learn from going to the business school. Firstly, our…

Today our group took up most of the day travelling to the Dutch city of Utrecht for a company visit. The company we visited in Utrecht Aurea imaging, utilizes drones to survey and manage farms. Aurea imaging’s office is located in a business park of Utrecht that host a wide variety of startup companies. We…

Today we traveled to the engineering college in central Amsterdam and to the Airplane company of KLM at Schipol Airport. The engineering college was extremely informative because of how it was similar to the University of Pittsburgh. For example, the main University building that we explored was extremely similar to the Posvar building at Pitt….

Today marks day 8 of our trip to the Netherlands. Our day started off rather later than in past days, at 10 am we travelled to the Amsterdam market with Max for some shopping. This market is unlike any clothing or vintage market that I have ever seen in the United States before. Firstly, at…

Today after an extremely quick breakfast the group travelled to the Watersnood museum. The museum is modeled after the Dutch flood of February 1st, 1953. During this time the country of the Netherlands was completely destroyed by the torrid water from the sea. One of the ways that the Dutch government solved this issue was…

Today marked the day that we travelled to Rotterdam. Unfortunately, our first train got cancelled on the way to the city so the rest of the day we spent making up the time that we lost getting to Rotterdam. Rotterdam itself is extremely different from the city of Amsterdam because of the fact that most…

Day five of this trip marked our visit to the engineering company of MX3D. The first half of the day saw us travelling to the city center of Amsterdam to observe the 3D printed bridge that MX3D implemented recently in the city. Upon arriving the first thing that I noticed was the sheer size of…

Today the group visited Royal Flora Holland and later the Tuliperij Tulip farm. Royal Flora Holland was especially interesting because while distributing large amounts of flowers across the world they also hold live auction at their location and online. This is a key role in their model of concept to customer to develop their business…

Today marked the day of visiting the small Dutch town of Zaanse Shans. Our purpose of this trip was to visit the windmill factories and learn about the engineering behind Dutch cultural industries such as shoes, cheese, and biscuit. When we arrived at the mills our tour guide Filipe explained to us the commission system…

Today marks the first day with professional activities on the trip in Amsterdam. Our morning consisted of a lecture about the sustainability of air travel by Karel Bockstael. Karel worked for over twenty years at a Dutch airline called KML. His now main focus is to develop the sustainability of air travel. His work in…

After many long hours of travel today we finally arrived in Amsterdam. The first things that I have noticed about the city and the culture itself is how transportation is completely different. Amsterdam essentially runs on bikes and trains to get people from place to place. Half if not more of the streets of downtown…