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Lisbon, Portugal - Visited Portugal in mid July for the music festival Super Bock Super Rock located near the beach south of Lisbon. Highlights of the festival were Arcade Fire, Portishead, Tame Impala, and Junip.
After the festival I spent a few more days climbing the hills of Lisbon (the geography and layout of the city has much in common with San Francisco), eating fresh seafood, Portuguese cheese, and lots of Chorizo.
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Siracusa, Sicily, Italy - Visited Siracusa, Sicily for a long weekend of chilling on the beach, jumping off cliffs into the ocean, cooking up fresh fish from the markets, and wandering around the old city, all in 35C/95F+ temps.
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Answers From Amsterdam: Part Nine
Seeing as you are an exchange student, what are some major differences in how the Dutch universities approach education as opposed to American universities?
Apart from the excitement and rush of living in such an international environment (created by the huge variety of nationalities that study in Amsterdam), the educational system of the Netherlands is one of the best things about studying in Amsterdam. The most noticeable difference between the university system in the Netherlands and the States is the course of difficulty and required independence in studies. My courses at VU Amsterdam are much harder than any course I’ve taken at ETSU (including Software Engineering). Even Media History (essentially film history) was a much more difficult course than it would be in the states. Strangely enough, it is the difficulty of the Dutch system that makes it an immensely better education system. Gone are the standardized, multiple choice questions, that often only cover part of the course. Instead, most classes involve massive amounts of reading leading the student to discover and pursue their own interests in a course. Additionally, testing is administered through comprehensive exams involving open-ended questions, often with a paper or experiment proposal (as I had to do in my Neuroscience Attention course) in addition. Other methods include weekly essays and writings replacing the need for an end of course exam. Finally, one of the best parts, though subtle, parts of the Dutch education system that universities in the States should adopt more often are breaks about every 45 minutes. A 10-15 minute break for food, coffee, and socialization can do wonders for refocusing one’s attention.
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Helsinki, Finland - Visited Finland in mid June where I met up with my brother and four other friends I’ve studied with in Amsterdam. Our week in Finland consisted of exploring the city, eating reindeer meat, pub crawling, and then recovering with a daily sauna visit, including taking dips in the icy Baltic sea between sessions.
Amstelpark, Amsterdam - Chill, relaxing, little park near the Amstel River between Amsterdam and Amstelveen (where I live). Unlike Vondelpark you can’t bike through Amstelpark, so it serves as a perfect environment for reading, thinking, or just spacing out. More about Amstelpark for those so inclined…
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La Joué du Loup, France - Traveled to the French Alps with the 300 other international and Dutch students from the Netherlands for a week of snowboarding. While the snow conditions were not of Utah or Colorado caliber, they were certainly better than anything the East Coast has to offer.
Check out more pictures from the ski trip here…
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Malmo, Sweden - While staying in Copenhagen I made a short hop on the train for a day trip in Malmo; a city of twisty architecture and Swedish girls located on the western coast of Sweden.
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Istanbul, Turkey
Before returning to Amsterdam from Cairo, I stopped in Turkey to explore Istanbul. Spent most of the time wandering around the city, walking along the coast on the Asian side, and eating more than a lifetime’s worth of donor kebabs. And there was also the time spent in a government funded hospital for a day on an IV due to food poisoning acquired during my last day in Cairo.
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Queen’s Night and Day in Amsterdam
Queen’s Day, or Koninginnedag in Dutch, is one of the most popular holidays in The Netherlands and one of the biggest parties in the world (especially in Amsterdam). While Queen’s Day is officially April 30, the festivities start the night of April 29 with many bars and clubs hosting special Queen’s Night events…but for most people it’s just an excuse to start celebrating early in the streets in anticipation of Queen’s Day. The naive often overdue it on Queen’s Night and don’t see much of Queen’s Day itself, while the wise and foresighted balance it out to get the best of both (I was in the second group mostly thanks to the advice of I gained from some Dutch).
Queen’s Day itself starts around 6am with the streets, from the suburbs to the city center, filling with every item imaginable for sale, like a Amsterdam-wide yard sale. Since I had to get that previously mentioned balance to make it through both days, I didn’t make it out for the morning street markets (though I did see people marking off their spot on the street for selling in the earlier morning hours while biking back to Uilenstede). By the time I made it downtown around 1:30pm, the city was overflowing with people, orange people, or at least wearing all sorts of orange clothing and accessories. Orange is the color of the Dutch royal family, House of Orange-Nassau, so on Queen’s Day, Dutch National Football team matches, and many other major sporting events, Oranjegekte (orange craze) takes over the country. We spent the day wandering between all the major -pleins and squares of the city, listening to live and DJ’d music, and consuming the “occasional” beverage, with a lot of Canal Chilling* in between. As the sun started to set we started the long walk back to our bikes (which were far south of the city center), but fortunately the walk wasn’t without its excitement for we were joined by thousands of Dutch who were heading home as well. Once we found our bikes (the combination of Dutch street names and the occasional beverage can be a hinderance), we rolled off for Uilenstede finally arriving home around 11pm. To sum it up, this won’t be my last time celebrating Queen’s Day in Amsterdam.
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*Usually involves finding a sunny place to sit on the edge of a canal while watching boatloads (or really anything that floats) of drunk Dutch dancing to techno and house music. At times may involve squirting passing boats and pedestrians with whatever liquids are closest at hand (let’s just say there’s not the possibility that it didn’t involve canal water) with a squirt gun recovered from the mayhem near Museumplein.
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