A Typical Day in Delft

A typical day will start off at 9 o’clock, so after an alarm and some breakfast I need to be out of the room by 8:45 (the earliest morning we’ve had was a train to Amsterdam that left around 7:30). On a day where we have class, which is probably a little over half of them, we’ll meet up in the classroom and spend a couple of minutes drinking our first dose of coffee and having some conversation. Then our lecture begins and we’re off learning about systematic safety in Dutch infrastructure and the beauty of their city planning. After lunch, we’ll either have some more lectures, have time to work on our projects and get faculty feedback, or we’ll go on an afternoon tour to see examples of pieces of infrastructure we just learned about.

In the afternoon tours, the time window we have is pretty small so we usually stay in and around Delft, venturing as far as a town or two over. The real exploration occurs on our full day trips. On these days, we’ll go to towns all across the country such as The Hague, Amsterdam, Haarlem, and many others. On these days, we usually go straight to the city hall to get a presentation from the city officials on a certain aspect of their towns such as the city planning, public transit system, or certain road redesigns.

These days are definitely the most enjoyable, as we get to explore a new area and learn about how the cities are run. After the city gives us refreshments (usually our second dose of coffee and a stroopwaffle) and they take us through their presentation, the rest of the day consists of bike tours to see the different parts of the city.

Finally, the day will end with either soccer or climbing, some food (and sometimes some drinks), and then a nice night sleep to get ready for it all over again.