Written by Tim Burdiak
Participant LMU Engineering Program 2010
On Thursday the 16th of September the LMU Engineering Program began its trip to Amsterdam and Bruges. After a delayed morning departure (sorry everyone...) we were on our way. After being forced to climb up and down three stories of the steepest staircases I’ve ever been on to get to our rooms we met outside to begin our tours.
The first day consisted of a cruise through the famous canal system of Amsterdam, an audio tour of the famous Van Gogh museum and a group dinner serving such good beef stew it made me feel bad for the vegetarians at my table that couldn’t help us try to finish the extremely large amount of food in front of us. We were then woken up early Friday morning to visit the famous Anne Frank House. After walking through the whole house, we hopped back on the bus for another two hour bus ride to check out the Dutch Delta Works which is the name for the dams, sluices, locks, dikes, levies, and storm surge barriers that the Dutch spent thirty years building to protect their country (which is mostly under sea level) from the catastrophe of a storm washing the ocean across their country.
Another two hours later we arrived in the city of Bruges in Belgium. We spent the night in our hotel, which was a boat on a canal, and spent the next morning on a scenic bike ride around Bruges and to the surrounding city of Damme. After spending some time in arguably the most beautiful city I’ve ever been in and trying a few of the cultural necessities of Belgium including waffles and chocolate our trip was complete and we headed home to Bonn.
Overall, the trip went better than I could have possibly imagined and all of the tours really brought everything that these two cities had to offer.
