For our last day in the Netherlands, we visited the Hague, the political capital of the Netherlands and home to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. After the end of the second world war, these courts were created and housed in the Peace Palace located in the Hague to try those…

After visiting the Delta Works yesterday, our group took a tour of the Watersnoodmuseum, a museum dedicated to the victims of the flood and recognizing what survivors faced during this harrowing experience. While here, we not only read accounts from survivors and about those who passed but heard them firsthand through our guide who survived…

Today we visited the Delta works, a network of storm surge barriers meant to protect citizens from flooding and rising sea levels. After a catastrophic flood in 1953, the delta works project was sped up in order to protect the region that is already below sea level from further issues and dangers. Originally, the project…

For our first full day in Rotterdam, we visited a floating farm in the Rotterdam harbor and toured the RDM facilities. The floating farm is one of the few prototypes able to break even as they sell the products they produce in their general store, to local buyers, and to businesses in the area. They…

On our way to Rotterdam, we took a day trip to the city of Munster in Germany. While here, we had the opportunity to sight-see and visit the many museums the city has to offer such as the Picasso museum, a Greek archeological history museum, and an art museum featuring paintings, sculptures, and writings across…

For our last day in Enschede, we toured the city center and got to experience a Dutch farmers market first hand. Although Enschede is much different than Amsterdam, the city still focuses on sustainability and meeting the needs of its residents in how it is built. Enschede is one of the few parts of the…

Our group began the move to our second location of the trip today: Enschede. Enschede is home to the University of Twente where we will attend lectures, tour a different type of city planning with different needs, and meet other student engineers. Our first stop was a lecture on waste water management before visiting a…

We began our fourth day in the Netherlands by traveling outside of Amsterdam to a windmill farm surrounding a small historic town. As we walked around, we saw what the original windmills looked like before they became the white wind turbines that are used today. While here, we saw many animals like ducks and sheep…

To start our busy day, we drove to a farm where we learned about the process of growing tulips and the importance of them for many Dutch farmers. While some farms grow tulips to sell the flowers, the farm we visited and most throughout the country prioritize growing tulip bulbs underneath the soil. This means…

After catching up on the sleep, our Plus 3 Netherlands group was ready to go on the second day of our trip. Our agenda for today: a scavenger hunt across the city and a visit to the House of Denim, a company whose main focus is making jeans more environmentally friendly. We started our day…

Our first adventure within the city was a canal tour of central Amsterdam. We had the opportunity to see Amsterdam from a different perspective and learned about the various architecture within the city from different time periods throughout history. For example, house numbers have only become popular within the last one hundred years in the…

An Introduction: I’m Stephanie Anderson, a structural engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh. Growing up in San Francisco, California, I am no stranger to towering skyscrapers and long bridges. I love breaking down the fundamentals of these structures and not only how they are built from the ground up but the math and planning…