Today, I will make my last post. I have had a superb year in Delft and got so many new friends. It will for sure miss them, but it also open up possibilities of great vacations.

Last week I had a “thank you for the year” dinner at a theme park, Duinrell, with my student association, Leeghwater . It was really fun. We were standing next to one water attraction, when a big wave approached us. I and a friend tried to take cover underneath an umbrella while the rest ran and took cover. It was a bad idea; the umbrella couldn’t handle the pressure so it collapsed. In the other hand we went afterwards to a swimming poll. It was really fun, a lot of slides and relaxing bubble pools.

In the end of the week my other student association, DARE , had a launch at some military field in the Netherlands. We had built 6 rockets from the CanSat project. We had 5 successful launches. I made and uploaded a video from this day to youtube. It's a really cool and fun project and I have learned a lot from them. I will actually continue helping them out till the end of November.

I left Delft with some of my luggage yesterday. I decided to divide it on two trips because I also need to bring back a pair of skies. The trip started a bit bad, while going on the train at Delft station, my big solid suit case got stuck between the train doors. I thought the doors would go up again as a safety feature in case it was some person. This was not the case, so I had to pull it in myself. The case almost broke. I guess this is one of the reasons the trains are always on time in the Netherlands.

I hope you have like my blogging, if you want to read more about me feel free to visit, http://www.danielandersson.nl/. I hope I have given you a lot of nice ideas what to do while being here in Delft. There will soon be an announcement for new webbloggers. If you don’t know what to do I would also like to recommend the starting of BEST DELFT, which you can be read more about here .

This weekend I together with three neighbours joined the BuitenlandRally organized by the student association of 3mE, Leeghwater. 5 countries in 3 days.

The rally is not about speed and breaking the laws but to have fun, see beautiful landscapes and have fun. Of course it's also comp.etition, but instead of completing the stages as fast as possible, the goal is to find signs placed along the suggested route and figure out the route itself. The destination is unknown and you can only find it out by figure out the navigation part or if you open the emergency envelope. However if you open the emergency envelope that gives you a lot of penalty points. Figuring out the rout can be pretty tricky; each stage is different and some need a little of planning in order to not get lost. Sometimes planning is no point, it can say travel on the road for 9.5 km and then turn towards the house with yellow windows. Most of the stages tries to avoid the highway and instead goes throw villages, the gorgeous country side as well as the mountains. We really liked the landscape in Belgium and Luxemburg! Due to the unknown destination and all small routes it was sometimes hard to know which country we in fact were in. The border between the Netherland and Belgium are not very strait. Zoom for example in Baarle-Nassau at Google maps. it's a very funny border line in my opinion...

What makes the rally really great was that it was very cheap as well the great team spirit. Each team had their own niche, just like in a movie. (The classic “Gumball” movie for example). Our team had a big dead scull on the hood, and a death flag on the roof of the Ford KA. We therefore called the team KillerKa. We consisted of 3 members, me from Sweden, Matteo and Giorgio from Italy and Marcel from Canada. In fact we were the only international so we got known as the international team. Despite some smaller problems we did okey and finished 14^th out of 26 cars.

The best part of the rally was the routes, so many good memories. After a nice dinner such as a BBQ we had for example a night stage each evening. This one was quite complicated from the navigation point of view. All teams were supposed to do the same route. It was no point to try to follow the other teams because it was just a matter of time before they would get lost. The feelings of finding the signs were also a really good reward. I would strongly recommend visiting Belgium as well as the rally. It will probably be organized once again the next year. For pictures please visit Leeghwater’s photo archive.

So I got some questions about the safety concern here in Delft. Someone asked me via my blog and thought it would be nice to write the answers here. If someone else has something they think I should write about it. Feel free to ask!

So about the safety, I would say that Delft is very safe. In fact Netherlands is very safe. That Delft is a small cozy town is one of the reasons for sure. For example, tonight I was running a bit around 11 in the night. People were out walking their dogs. I never been feeling unsafe here and I don't think any of my girl friends has either. I have not heard about any people who got hurt or similar things my entirely time here.

At the university people leave their jackets without being afraid that someone would steal it. Sometime even mine neighbour leave their door unlocked while they go to the supermarket. Anyway, that is a bit risk so that I would strongly not recommend for people to do that. Some laptops were stolen from some apartment one year ago so at least I lock my door when I'm not home!

About the bikes things are however a bit different. I'm happy that I got to borrow an old second hand bike from a friend. No one has been near it, while some of my friends have got their bikes stolen. Netherlands is very flat as well so it's no need to have extra gears. Therefore I believe it's not necessary to buy a new bike. There are so many bikes in the Netherlands so it is easy to find an old bike. It can also be good to know how to fix a tire if you want to bike around a bit in the Netherlands during the summer. Some friends have even two bikes in case one of them breaks down. That is also good in case you have some friends coming by.

After being in Delft for almost 9 months my hair started to be way to long. So it was time to go to the barber. However trying to explain how you want the hair, is not very easy here in the Netherlands. What I heard from some friends, is that you should bring a picture to the barber to show them how you want it to be. I didn't however had any pictures... I'm not that picky about the hair either, so instead of searching for a barber shop, I made an appointment with my neighbour! I never used a machine to cut my hair before but it turned out to be really good, as well as for free! The Italian guy know what he were doing.... The weather is getting better here again so it's nice to have a bit shorter hair :-)

Tonight the rector (headmaster) of TU Delft come by our student apartment (Marcushof) and had a nice meeting with us. The rector is a funny guy and likes to get the input of the all students regarding basically everything. The topic started with general about the academic responsibility to then go into more detail, such as the international student life, communication and student accommodation. The fire were of course mention a couple of times. However I have to say that I do feel more " Dutch " than " International " when it comes to some of the question. Basically it all what you do it yourself, people are not kids anymore. However it was really nice to see that the rector is being so active and actually take the time to visit and listen to the international students. He also visited some of the student apartments. The night got long so I left at eleven but the meeting with the rector continued for those who were interested.

Last week my student committee arranged a CASE with the Dutch bank ABN. I was the main organizer of the event. Because there was not much to visit at the ABN office, we decided to instead have the case study at club Karavaan which is located at the beach of Scheveningen. The weather was great. We were 10 students from the Aerospace faculty as well as 10 from the faculty 3mE. We started around two in the afternoon with a presentation from ABN with an overview how it is from an engineer to work at a bank. Afterwards ABN had prepared a financial case. It was about two beer companies; SAB Miller and Grolsh. SAB Miller wanted to buy Grolsh and the students were acting SAB Miller while ABN was the board of SAB Miller. We had about one hour to come up with convincing arguments as well as a price. To our help we had their annual report, 3 different consult reports as well as the experts help from ABN. It was a nice challenge. We did manage to find a few good arguments, for example Grolsh would be able to use SAB Miller distribution network and in that way expand even more. We also found out that 38% of the share holders of SAB Miller had Dutch nationality so we also said that we wanted to keep the production in the Netherlands. Of course we also suggested a nice price.

Both ABN and the students were satisfied afterwards. With a perfect sun going down over the sea horizon we had BBQ together with a few beers. A much better evening would be hard to organize. In fact many of the student associations in the Netherlands urge international students to join them. However the interest from the non-Dutch student is very low. Most of “us” like to do other things such as travel around in Europe. However I do both at the same time!

I had the alarm on 06:00 yesterday. My neighbour Sheryes had an Indian birthday party the evening before so I didn’t get much sleep. However it was no problem to get up due what I planned to do during the day. I had been in contact with the student association DSA, Delftsche Studenten Aeroclub and was going to fly with their sailplanes. For only 50 euro I got 3 flights, travel and lunch! I was very excited. They picked me up at 07.15 next to the train station and we then drove for one hour to the airfield Terlet near Arnhem, which is a bit north of Utrecht. The wind was from east which meant that we had to share a field with some other gliding clubs. It was a really good spirit at the airfield, everyone helped each other. There were however no trees which meant that it were pretty hard to find any shadow. I am therefore now a very brown.

 

My first flight was as a passenger. One experience member did the manoeuvrings while I took pictures and looked around. He found some good up winds which took the plane to a higher altitude. Once you found an upwind, you want to stay in that area. This meant that he was making a pretty strong left turn for about 10 minutes. Once we reached an altitude of above 1.5 km I started to get dizzy of all the spinning. This together with some turbulence made me regret that I just had eaten a sandwich before the flight. I vomited in a barfbag. It was supposed to be a long flight but instead I wanted to rest a bit on the ground, so we put out the breaks and landed. The excitement dropped a bit.

 

After an hour on the ground I started to feel good again. At this time it was my turn to steer the plane! It was really fun and I felt much better during this flight. I also went up a third time in the evening close to the sunset which was really gorgeous. The air was quite and there possible to see a lot of balloons in the horizon. The day was very successful and I arrived home after midnight with a big smile.

 

 

In the end of April and the May holiday starts here in the Netherlands. We, students are free for ten days. Some have to catch up missed things but I was a bit lucky and managed to get most things done before the start of the Holiday. The first day, the sport centre had a “Thank god is Friday” and gave away free beers. It was actually some really good quality beers and nothing like Amstel or Heineken. The weather has been great the whole week; I have been playing a lot of tennis as well as bicycling with my brother who came by for a four days visit. Many people had friends here over this weekend and went to citied like The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht or Amsterdam. However I and my brother had already visited those. It’s not that hard to go far in the Netherlands with bike because the landscape is so flat. We managed to go about 50 km, to a city called Leiden. However the borrowed second-hand bikes are not the best and shake a lot while rolling. We therefore had the chain jump three times as well as a flat tire. When the weather is good here in the Netherlands its really nice to be here!

 

 

 

The 30^th of April is the Queens day in Netherlands. This mean that people dress up in Orange and make all the big cities a giant party! It’s actually such a big party that they decided to start the party one day earlier, the 29^th.  We went therefore the 29^th to The Hague. This night is called the Queens Night, the spirit was really good in the city but people were a bit too drunk in my opinion. There were a lot of good music and we had a very good time. The next day on Wednesday, we went to Amsterdam to check out the Queens Day. It’s was extremely crowded and most of the crowd wore something in Orange, the Dutch colour. (It’s probably Orange due to William van Orange, some old famous Dutch King, who btw is buried under the new Church in Delft). The channels in Amsterdam were full with boats, which had so many people, that they were close to sink. This is what you can see in the picture below. Closer to the evening, not very unforeseeable we heard the sirens from the fire department... The music in Amsterdam has some more local music in the pubs, together with some big concerts in the parks. After some walking in the city, it was possible to find a bar with really good music. There are many concerts coming up in this time of the year in the Netherlands, tonight, Ska will play for free in the Hauge...  I will go there with some friends because the train to HS only 2 euro.

 

 

As a part of the construction of our rocket we learned this week to manufacture glass fiber. The process we used was vacuum infusion. What we made was a plate about 40x40 cm. First you have to cut out the layers of glass fibers, while doing this you have to use some glows, else it will feel like you have touched a broken glass bottle. That itches a lot… When it’s decided how you want the fiber directions should be these will be put under a plastic film and then connect this to a pump which create close to vacuum underneath the film. That is what I am preparing at the picture! After that you apply the some resin (in our case epoxy) and then you have to wait for about 2 days for the resin to get stiffen. We picked up the plate yesterday. We were 4 people so we wanted to split the peace in 4. It turned out to be pretty difficult; in fact it was almost impossible to break it. It was less than 1 cm thick, transparent and weighted nothing. However you could still jump on it! In the end we managed to break it with the help of some tools in the DARE workshop.