Going Dutch Blog

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A presentation I did comparing Amsterdam canal houses to a Modern Dutch neighborhood based on the concept of the canal house.

—Jamie

May 31, 2009

The flight to Amsterdam was pretty long. I had a hard time keeping myself entertained. My lower back was killing me. We got off the plane and onto a train. From the train we got on the tram and that’s when the trouble started. There wasn’t really enough room for us on the tram so we had to stand. It was really jolty, I thought I was going to fall over. Teela and I kept getting pushed further and further from the group. Then all of a sudden the group was gone and Teela and I couldn’t get off the tram. Once we got to the next stop we bolted back to the previous stop only to find that our group had left us. We wandered around a few blocks and couldn’t find any information or anyone to ask. We asked three different groups of people and got three different directions. Our backs were killing us from carrying luggage. We finally found a guy who knew exactly where it was. It was back where we started. We did eventually get to the hostel at the relief of our teachers and us. From there we went to breakfast at a pancake house. I got the lemon pancakes thinking they would be fruitier than sweet, but there were sugar crystals in the lemon sauce, thus making it sweet.

—Jamie

Sunday we all went to the strand, or beach, at Hoek van Holland, 30 minutes by train from Rotterdam. We had no problems and were walking to the beach when we passed an old WWII concrete bunker on the left of the road. a guy was painting it black, and it was stenciled with “Atlantik Wall Museum.” It turned out to be a volunteer-run museum of sorts, filled with photos, models, and artifacts from the 1940-45 occupation, when huge fortifications like this were built along the east coast of Europe by the German military. A really great guy named Pieter gave us a tour. Afterward we headed out to the beach, which was cold and windy. But the sun was out and, no matter where you are, the beach is the beach. We had lunch at an outdoor cafe, buried Matthew in the sand, and threw the frisbee in a stiff sea breeze. Oh, and we did eventually did Matthew up again. We came home exhausted though. What is it about the beach? Monday everyone was dragging in class and went to bed early.

—Todd Duren

Today is a free day on our itinerary, and we went to a platform diving event in Rotterdam. Divers from different countries leaping from a platform high atop a large crane into a canal. Some of us stood in the crowd to watch these guys hurtled into the hidden water between high rise buildings, their bodies describing a perfect line. Tonight several of us are planning to go to the Slag by Waterloo Festival to hear some live music. Karen left this morning, and I’m catching up on laundry by rinsing my clothes in the tiny hostel shower.

—Todd Duren

From the first day I saw the Erasmus Bridge I knew I wanted a photograph of the it from an arial view. Looking downstream from the bridge I saw the location that I hoped to be my vantage point for the photograph: the Montevideo-—a massive condo complex reserved for Holland’s richest and finest. I was determined to get to the top of that building. Read the rest of this entry »

Find more photos like this on Going Dutch

This slide show is a small selection of photographs students have uploaded to the photo sharing website  goingdutch2009.ning.com

To see more photos taken by individual students, click the link above to create a membership on our website.

—Emily Naff

(note…this was written Sunday June 14, 2009 by Emily Naff)

Raining in Rotterdam. It’s our first morning in Rotterdam, and I’m taking advantage of a quiet and rainy Sunday morning to write. It’s been a busy first two weeks in The Netherlands. The photography class has been busy making the most of their time in Amsterdam. We haven’t slowed down long enough to edit and post photos. We had hoped to keep images from assignments posted on goingdutch2009.ning.com, but since students had to pay for internet service by the minute, that would have cost too much. We found wi-fi at the Bagels and Benas today, so students just got some images posted. Stay tuned for more details. In the meantime, I thought I’d give you an idea of some of the activities we did, just to tease you until you get to see their photos.

Read the rest of this entry »

This morning after breakfast here we’re moving out from the old Stayokay location and will take the metro down to the Cube Houses to set up for class. We walked down to see them yesterday, and Pieter Baas showed us around.

The Cube houses were designed in the 1980s by Dutch architect Piet Blum, and are one of the trademarks of the city. The village of diagonal cubes includes a museum, shops, and private homes. The architect’s some will be here for an official ceremony for the Cube Houses next Sunday. We’ll be some of the first people to stay there, and are really excited about it.

—Todd Duren

Today was our big moving day. The first half of the trip in Amsterdam is done—now we are in the second host city of our trip: Rotterdam.

The students had their bags packed before breakfast, and brought them down to the hostel lobby for check out afterward. After a nice version of “Happy Birthday” for me from the students (and there’s no place I’d rather spend my birthday!) we hit the road. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday we had our first day trip by train. We went to the Hague, the seat of Dutch government. Taking two trams and a train with our entire groups was a good practice for our moving day, which is tomorrow.

We all visited the Gemeente Museum, housed in a great looking early modernist building. The museum was designed by De Stijl architect H.P. Berlage. We saw a nice exhibit that was an overview of Modernist art, put in the social context of twentieth century Dutch history using video and bilingual text. This museum has more Piet Mondrian paintings than any other museum in the world. Read the rest of this entry »