I was in a hotel with Heather, Matt, and Elyzabeth. We initally had some trouble trying to coordinate with each other once we got to Amsterdam but we found our way to the hotel eventually. We had four people staying in a two person room so we had to squish a little. The three of us girls slept sideways on the beds under one blanket while Matt slept in his “Matt Cave” under the desk with the other blanket, pillow, and all the towels for cushion.
Then we got up early on Saturday morning to go meet up with everyone else and take on Amsterdam. It took us a while to get together and plan the day so when we finally did get going, we started out by going on a canal cruise before getting lunch. The canal cruise was definitely worth the time. We got to see a lot of Amsterdam and got a bit of a crash course history lesson at the same time. For lunch, I ended up with the group that got pizza. It’s funny how we’re abroad but we seem to keep reverting back to American food every chance we get.
After lunch, we split into Heineken Experience and shopping groups for a few hours. I went to the Heineken Experience and that was more interesting than I was really expecting. It seemed to me like they tried to explain a lot more of the science that goes into brewing beer than they probably would in the US. It wasn’t really anything new to a bunch of science majors, like us, but it was interesting to see that the other people there seemed to have a high enough science-knowledge-baseline that they understood what was being said pretty easily. In my experience, a lot of people in the US don’t understand or don’t care to understand how something like fermentation works.
As we were leaving, we met another group of Texans. I believe they were from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and they were on a study abroad trip based in Austria. It was pretty cool to see that we aren’t the only Texans over here.
Then we went and met up with everyone else in this big, open park sort of place and took a nap in the grass behind the Van Gogh Museum. There were people everywhere but it still seemed so quiet. It was a great break from Louisiana to just be able to lay outside in the sun in the middle of the day and be comfortable instead of suffering from the outrageous heat and humidity. Then we went to the Anne Frank House and took a tour through that. It was really good to see first hand how she and her family had to live until they were given up.
On Sunday, we got up and went to the Van Gogh Museum with one of the other groups. It hinted a little about how Van Gogh probably had some form of epilepsy which could have been responsible for him cutting off part of his ear and later committing suicide. From my perspective, that was the coolest part of the whole museum but I’m also not really into much visual art to begin with. Then it was off to the train station to make our way back to Bonn.
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