Submitted by Makenzie Beshel on the 2020 winter session study abroad program in London, England sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice…
This past weekend, we had a short break and an opportunity to visit more of Europe. We took this as a chance to visit Amsterdam. We initially believed that we were going to face a few challenges between traveling alone and also facing a language barrier. To our surprise, it was easy to navigate, as almost everywhere used English and it was amazing trying to take in a new culture within a few days. I have always heard people talk about the amount of freedom that there is in Amsterdam and how different laws are there from anywhere in the world. I learned that Amsterdam had so much more than that to offer. I quickly realized why they are so well known for their pancakes. It was also fascinating to me the amount of canals that run through it. I had heard about them before visiting, but I wasn’t expecting to see them at almost every place that we walked through, and bridge that we crossed. It was also beautiful to see all of the art within the museum quarter.
Despite being able to cover a lot in such short time, there were still a couple of difficulties that we weren’t expecting. The hardest part to me was the public transportation. Similar to London, there is an underground, but the difficult part was our misunderstanding of how to pronounce different stops. We realized navigating was going to be difficult when our phones were dying and we would have to read the maps inside of the train to understand where to go. It was fun to take a break from technology and learn to navigate like tourists for the day. I also learned that both Amsterdam and London have beautiful weather, but in small doses. Each place has short periods of rain, or even hail, but it clears up within a few minutes. There’s a lot of little things I’m noticing about the scenery and culture in these places and I am excited to continue as our program comes to an end.
