So now here is the second part of my Amsterdam tale.
Day Three: Rotterdam
What a nice city. It got totally leveled in WWII, so since then its come along way. There are a lot of modern buildings, overall very clean, and a very lively marketplace. In the morning I had a presentation at the Kunsthal in the morning, it went pretty well. I still have to present the Dutch Embassy when we get to Berlin, and then the rest of the class is a 10-page paper comparing and contrasting the two projects.
I was surprised that I got to present my project in the auditorium, which was a special occasion. I’m still not sure what the smile and frown faces on the glass represent, but I’m sure I’ll find it out at some point in my research.
This is a typical OMA-Rem Koolhaas building, with main program spaces split by a main trajectory path that is blurred from interior to exterior. You can tell they were very happy with the result:
We spent some time wandering around Rotterdam, but there wasn’t much else to do so we took the train back to Amsterdam fairly early. I was hoping to get the Heineken Brewery tour in tonight, but they changed from their summer hours, so we got there after it closed. While we were out eating it started to rain, so the night was called early.
Day Four: Utrecht
Very interesting buildings were seen today. The Utrecht University seems like a really cool campus. It was Sunday morning there, so not a lot was going on, though at one point a pack of 200+ girls went out for a bike ride. I caught a photo of a few tailing off the back:
I think there were at least 15 girls for every guy we saw. Coming from Wentworth, that’s seems like a pretty amazing ratio. Sometimes it makes me think I should transfer, but I’m two semesters away from my bachelor’s so why bother. As for grad school, well, we’ll see. One more year at Wentworth makes financial sense.
We visited the library at the University, which had a very neat texture on every panel of the building, and even on the glass as a print for shading:
The inside was probably the most wide-open library I've ever seen. The idea is that everybody can see everybody, which encourages more social interaction. It also can serve as a motivator to someone like me where if I can see everyone else studying, I should probably be too.
After wards, we walked down to the one, the only, Schröder House! Holy crap was this place pretty beat up, but thinking about it, its more than 80 years old, and that type of house wasn't designed to last. It was a bummer we couldn't 'make pictures' inside (every European tour guide's favorite expression).
After that tour, we broke for lunch in the historic center of Utrecht. There was some were nice scenery, and its a city I wouldn't mind living in.
I made it back to Amsterdam, took the tram straight to the Heineken brewery to see if I could make the tour. We just missed the last tour, which was a shame being our last night in Amsterdam, but the shop was open so I got some souvenirs anyway. A good group of us went out and enjoyed our last night in Amsterdam, out hitting up the bars. The highlight of the night was three of my friends accidentally stumbling into a gay bar to go to the bathroom, getting lots of racy comments from all the guys in there. It was almost a bad idea with a group of about 10 or so drunk Americans parading the red light district and surrounding bars, but then again most of everyone around that area are tourists anyway. Its nice not having to worry about getting much sleep, because of the very long bus ride we had the next day. I think I might be back sometime in the near future.
Next stop: Paris!
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