Delft: The Start of a New Adventure
Stepping out into the Amsterdam airport, things seemed to be quite similar to things from home. It was nearly the same bustling airport that I had left a few hours before. Then I started to notice the differences, primarily the language. Dutch looked similar to English but it looked very distorted. The language, too, reflected a sound that was similar to English yet clearly not. This being an exception, I still hardly felt that I had left my own country even as we loaded onto the bus waiting for us outside the airport.
Once we took to the road, however, I began to notice some clear differences. The Netherlands is very flat, and as soon as you leave a city it is very rural. As our bus took us from the airport in Amsterdam to our temporary hostile in The Hague, we passed by miles and miles of farmland. The one thing that I was keenly on the lookout for, the expanses of bicycles, did not come to me during this ride down the freeway. Rather, it happened when I woke up from my jet-lagged nap outside of our hostile.
Looking out, the city looked almost similar to a smaller US city, resembling a less grid-like Providence. Again, I was surrounded by the difference of language. Now on top of that, I was surrounded by what I had came to see and to study, bikes. There were elderly people, children, and every person in between maneuvering the endless bike lanes with ease (usually on bike, occasionally on moped). Two things became abundantly clear. Biking was the way to get around the city, and every person on that road had been on two wheels for their entire life. I finally got to see the bike paths that covered the city, just as common as a sidewalk, that I had been anticipating for such a long time and I was ecstatic by the sight. The next step, to get on a bike and try them for myself.
After a night exploring The Hague and a breakfast at the hostel, we began our orientation. It started with a train ride from our area in The Hague to the center of Delft, a trip that took probably about 20 minutes. We were taken to the city center and walked around, eating food and witnessing the weddings taking place on that beautiful afternoon. From there we walked to TU Delft where our classes are taking place.
The second stand out moment of our orientation, following my first use of netherlands public transportation, was the giving out of the bicycles. Finally, I could ride anywhere that my legs would take me, and it felt amazing. The third, and my personal favorite part of the orientation was when we took the bikes to the road. We followed the bike path back in order to return to our hostel for the final night, and the ride was amazing. There was not a single place that you could not go if you had the desire. We rode next to canals, over bridges, through tunnels, and next to the road. Finally, after we had returned to the hostel, I truly felt as if I was beginning to experience life in another country.
