At the End of Day 2

Photo by Dr. Bertini (2023)

We began the day with a guest lecture from Professor Gonçalo Homem de Almeida Correia, an instructor at the Technical University of Delft, about some of the things the school is working on, and a great deal of information about its Master's program. Apparently it's relatively similar to what we have in the US, but he said it would typically cost around €1000 per year! That's practically nothing in comparison! Additionally, the student's thesis project is sponsored by a company or public entity with a vested interest in the subject, which in the US would probably mean something like Boeing hiring a graduate student to do research on

Photo by Anna
Trohimovich (2023)

what additives make jet fuel more efficient, cleaner burning, or something like that. And yes, I do mean hired: In the Netherlands, graduate students are paid a salary by whatever company is supporting their project, and they are functionally a full employee at that location for the duration of whatever contract they were given! Completely different from the US, where we have to compete for a handful of grants and scholarships, take loans, and oftentimes work a part-time job just to be able to afford to live in the area! The main downside is that housing in the area seems to be in rather limited supply, and with high demand that means prices are through the roof! Apparently, a single bedroom apartment can run you upwards of €1100 per month, putting it pretty much on par with many places in the US right now. Even still, the cost would be less than what I currently pay for my undergrad tuition!

We then went over the schedule for the next two weeks before setting off to explore the open-air market between the Old Church and the New Church. One interesting aspect of the city that we noticed were all of the canals running between streets. They were fairly varied in some ways, largely the height of the embanking walls and the amount of plantlife on the surface of the water, but generally speaking, these canals were quite uniform where it counts: the depth of the water, width of the channel, and clearance under bridges. Notably, there is easily enough clearance below the bridges to allow a relatively shallow boat to pass through, meaning that they can still be used to transport people and goods throughout the city,

which several people take advantage of in offering tours of the city via the canals by boat. There are also several businesses (none of which I thought to take pictures of) with doors and small landings opening directly onto the canals, raised a few feet to account for the height of the boat deck. They don't seem to be primarily used for transport of goods anymore though, as while I didn't see any boats moving along them with shipments I did see a single large box truck driving through the city center to make deliveries during the open market. Notably, it was one of the only large vehicles I have seen in motion while here, a point I'll discuss later in more detail.

One more point of mention is that several of the canals running through Delft seem to have some level of litter cluttering their waterways, which is unfortunate to see. It typically isn't much, granted, but it is still rather disappointing to see these things in any capacity. Notably, most of what I've seen is plastic soda bottles, and in the photo here they seem to be very American in their shape, which makes me wonder if perhaps it's mostly tourists creating this problem. I will make a point of including a photo in my next post, but there are several waste repositories along any road here, including fully separate containers for recyclables. The idea that you should be as environmentally friendly as possible here is very strong, and just looking out my hotel window, most of the roofs on the horizon (especially the flat ones) are covered in solar panels, and the one nearest in the photo below is also covered in some type of plant life, most likely a moss of some kind, which will help with both temperature in the building by absorbing some of the sun's heat, and it will absorb a decent bit of carbon dioxide, helping reduce the levels of the gas in the atmosphere.

Jumping back to the open market, as I said before the whole thing took place between the Old and New churches, and it's hard to explain in words the sheer scale of those buildings. Especially the Old church, with its bell tower that chimes every 15 minutes and tolls out the hour when it changes over. The front door alone is probably about twice as tall as I am, and the actual tower, well, towers over every other building in the area! I think the only structure that can rival its height, which is surely well in the hundreds of feet, is a building on the TU Delft campus which I believe Professor Correia said was occupied by the software engineering students, but I may be misremembering that. Regardless, the tower is very much an engineering marvel, as is the rest of the building stretching out behind it. For a fee, you can also go into the Old Church and climb to the top of the bell tower or explore the museum! It's open every day of the week except Sundays, which seems to be a fairly common theme around here.

After spending some time at the market, we went and explored the downtown on foot for a while. Here there were several cafes, restaurants, and shops, some of which were chains that also exist in the US, many of which weren't. The downtown experience is vastly different here compared to the US as well, with locations not only being so close together that they share a wall when not across the street from one another, but also seemingly not permitting businesses to use giant, brightly-colored signs and billboards for advertisement, making for a much calmer, more compact, and altogether person-friendly experience. Again, I failed to actually get any pictures, but you can see some of the buildings in the first canal photo above. We did stop at a bookstore, which had prices much lower than you would see in the US and in which I was able to pick up a Dutch-English dictionary that I am hopeful will help me in learning the language.

During a sort of "extension" to our tour, we also happened upon the bike seen in this photo here. The whole thing is covered in moss, and the spokes in the front wheel are almost all completely gone, leading our group to suspect that at some point it was abandoned here, though it's unclear why exactly this was done. Bikes are a primary means of transportation here, so it doesn't exactly make sense that someone would simply abandon their vehicle on the side of the road without reason.

Finally, we arrive near the end of the day, when we had a few hours of free time to muck about before we came together for a group dinner. I elected to take this time to get (mildly) lost in Delft on my own bike, and this happened to place me directly next to what I can only assume to be a highway: cars were flying past to my right, there were several lanes going by, and I couldn't have felt much safer thanks to the massive blockade between me and them. It happens that the bike route brings cyclists all to the same side of the road, meaning that I was not only next to rather fast-moving motorists, but I was also going in the opposite direction to those drivers nearest me. Not exactly what you would want to be doing in the US, but here such things seem to be the norm! And again, if anything were to have happened there was this railing made complete with bracing trusses I have never seen anywhere else, which would have stopped the car before it made it far into the bike lane. 

Until tomorrow!