Earlier in the day, I decided that I wanted to have a quiet morning to work on catching up on blogging and uploading photos from my camera. I walked a few blocks to Starbucks since I was craving something a little closer to home. After a large iced coffee, three hours of blogging, sorting through photos and some reading, I rounded up my stuff and walked back to the hotel to drop of my backpack. Then, I walked about 10 mins from the hotel up to the canal where the Heineken Experience is located. I met up with our big group of people and we headed inside.
The Heineken Experience starts out with guides giving you the history behind the brand and how their beer is made. You then get to move into an area where you get to see the brewing equipment and even try out the sugary mix that is used in their beer before yeast is added to create alcohol. After this, you move into a room with screens covering the entire room, taking you through and experience as if you were the beer being mixed and bottled. It is filled with a lot of lights and music, and at the very end you get to learn how to properly toast in Dutch with a small Heineken. While the light show aspect was interesting, standing in a room for 20 minutes pretending to be a beer bottle did get a little boring.
The rest of the experience is filled with things like arcade games, learning how to pour your own beer correctly and even a video karaoke stage. We made our way downstairs to the bar and swapped out our tokens for a couple of beers and enjoyed each others company for a little while. At the very end, you can go into the gift shop and pick up a bottle that has a custom printed label on the bottle of Heineken. They also do custom glass etching on your very own Heineken glass, so naturally I came home with both. When I was little, my dad would to bring home a shot glass from wherever he had traveled and we started a collection. As I got older and became the one in the family who traveled all over the country for soccer, I have steadily added to their collection. I figured a custom Heineken bottle and glass from the home of Heineken would be a pretty cool addition to the collection.
This is the end of my first full week in Amsterdam. Honestly, the whole week was kind of a blur. We celebrated both Elaine and Talia’s birthdays, visited 6 museums, had class sessions and site visits, went clubbing and even got to check out the famous Ice Bar in Amsterdam. I think all of us are in disbelief that the time has gone so fast. Even sitting here in Coffee and Coconuts about a block from the hotel, it is hard to believe that the day is almost over. Elaine, Magenta and I came here to use the great wifi and enjoy some coffee while prepping our presentation on The Ten Faces of Innovation for tomorrow. I’m excited to kick off another week here in Amsterdam and continue exploring the city.
It’s amazing how fast you learn to navigate where you’re living when you’re out walking so much. I can find my way to the laundromat, Amsterdam Centraal Station, the Museumplein and pretty much any restaurant within a four block radius of the hotel. I have managed to avoid being hit by any bikes or scooters, albeit narrowly, which is an impressive feat because there are so many of them everywhere. The streets are completely lined with bikes and even after a week, it still catches my attention everywhere we go. I haven’t worked up the courage yet to rent a bike from the hotel and bike to one of our site visits, but Kletia and I have agreed that we both need to give it a try before we leave Amsterdam to really get the full Dutch experience.
The other thing that has been really noticeable is how direct the Dutch are. I am very glad we were warned of that before travelling, because sometimes from an American perspective the way they interact, particularly in customer service jobs, would be considered rude. It is really fascinating that they place an emphasis on being direct and to the point. Cashiers simply ring up your items and ask you for cash, they don’t engage you in conversation at all. Having worked as a cashier at Sephora, I would be talking to clients about the products they were buying or how their day was going since that is a typical pillar of American customer service.
Service, especially at restaurants, is exponentially slower than what we are used to in America. It can be nice but also frustrating when you really do want to head out of a restaurant and struggle to catch a waiter’s attention to get the check. However, I love the fact that when we take a group of 10 of us out to eat, we can sit at the restaurant for two hours and get to know each other. We eat out a lot, and we’ve quickly learned that they don’t take tips and they don’t split bills. Even more interesting is the massive amount of restaurants that offer outdoor seating, which in 90 degree weather is a blessing. While it can be a little intimidating at times to be in a different country, it is fascinating to see how differently people live their lives, even in small ways like dining at a restaurant.