First Week of Break - Study Tour with DIS

The first week of the three week travel break was a DIS-led study tour to Germany and the Netherlands. It was similar to the tour I took earlier this semester to Western Denmark, just longer. We left Sunday March 21st in the morning, drove to Hamburg, Germany where we spent a couple of hours walking around the city and then continued driving the rest of the day to Dusseldorf, where we stayed for 2 nights. We spent our time in Germany around Dusseldorf and Cologne which two major cities in the Rhine-Rhur valley area which is one of the largest population centers in Europe. Notable buildings/places we saw were the convereted Zollverine Mines which used to be a huge coal mining factory and is now being converted into a cultural spaces, Museum Insel Hombrich, which is a large park/garden with 16 art pavilions in it that are supposed to blend in with the landscaping. We also saw the Kolumba Museum in Cologne and the Cologne Cathedral. Unfortunately the study tours are very busy so we don’t really get any free time except late at night by which time I was pretty tired and ready to go to bed so I didn’t really get to see that much of Germany.

From Germany we drove to the Netherlands and we stayed in a really nice hotel right outside of Utrecht (which is a 30 min train ride outside of Amsterdam). In the Netherlands we saw a famous city hall in Hilversum and then walked around the new town of Almere (near Amsterdam). We also got to spend an entire day in Amsterdam, partly with DIS and partly on our own and then we spent a day in Utrecht and saw several buildings at the University of Utrecht and the Schroeder House, which is one of the most famous houses in architecture and one of the only examples of the De Stijl movement. The Schroeder House was my favorite thing we saw on the tour and I really recommend that anyone who goes to Amsterdam take a trip out to Utrecht to see it if you have time.

Overall, the study tour was okay but I’ve really started to realize that I don’t like being on large tours and being herded from place to place with 40 other students. However, it was a really good experience to see buildings that I otherwise wouldn’t have traveled to see and it was nice not to have to worry about logistics for the first week of traveling.

On my own

The DIS-led study tour ended Friday March 27th after dinner in Utrecht so I went to Amsterdam that night and planned to spend Saturday in Amsterdam before heading off to Brussels for a day and a half.