By Sustainability Research Fellow Katie Koenig
Finally, onto the actual travel advice! Even if you aren’t staying at the castle, I’ll try and keep my tips applicable to general travel as well, even just for students that have to travel far to get to and from the main campus each semester.
Amsterdam Excursion
To give some context, I’ll be focusing on the first trip I took out of the castle. After orientation weekend, classes started right away for our Monday through Thursday schedules, and on Friday all of us were off way too early at 6:45am to our first required academic excursion, this semester scheduled for Amsterdam. We stayed in a hostel booked by OSA, went to a multitude of museums in smaller groups, and pretty much were required to follow our guides and groups from nine in the morning to five at night Friday and Saturday, checking out of the hostel Sunday morning and left to our own devices to keep exploring or head back to the castle. Although we hadn’t yet had any issues with bedbugs, it’s often a good idea to bring a sleeping sack with you just in case. A small towel and shower supplies, including shower shoes, are always smart to bring to any hostel, because they won’t be provided. We had group rooms with other Emerson students, so we didn’t need padlocks for the storage boxes per person in the rooms, but if you’re staying in a hostel with strangers, always remember to pack some sort of lock.
We took a bus to get there, which was a two hour trip straight from the castle to our hostel, and the trip back was about two and a half hours considering transfers between trains and buses as we all planned our own routes back to the castle. This is true for a lot of nearby countries, but you can get to so many amazing destinations by taking international trains and public transportation. Not only does flying have a much bigger carbon footprint than bus or train transportation, the most convenient airport nearby is Eindhoven, which is typically reached by a pricey taxi ride. Even during peak hours, the taxi costs upwards of €130, and Uber often is heinously expensive or just not available in the small, remote town of Well. It’s sometimes the smarter option to fly, especially on trips to London or Paris, for example, but travel in a group. It’s safer and often less expensive to split costs as a group, and certainly don’t discount the amazing locations reachable by train and bus near or in the Netherlands when planning your trips. You don’t need a costly — financially or environmentally — trip to have a great experience.
Once you reach your destination, or even if you want to travel around the area that you live, there are always amazing towns and cities reachable by train, especially in the Netherlands. Venlo, Nijmegen, and Amsterdam are bustling cities with fascinating museums, antique shops, and historic buildings. In order, my favorite places to see at each location are Venlo’s museum of modern art and Bagels and Beans (a great coffee and bagel place), Nijmegen’s Gebroaders van Lymborch huis (a museum about the influential van Lymborch brothers, best known for their illuminated manuscripts from the 14th century, with a fascinating and innovative tour about their lives and artistry careers), and Amsterdam’s Dam Square (which has the coolest tiny alleys with great restaurants and shops nearby). I went to Düsseldorf in Germany on a day trip which has a bustling Little Tokyo district, the best view along the Rhine, and a fascinating aquarium (the Aquazoo), though the signs were all in German.
One last tip for any intrepid travelers: pack snacks and entertainment, from a small book and granola bars to a mindless app and a sandwich. Aside from being more prepared, bringing your own snacks reduces the packaging waste convenience store food comes with, too. A powerbank for my phone has saved me more than once, especially since my phone hates me and has burned through the battery in the five years I’ve owned it. My powerbank (truthfully one I borrowed from a friend back in Boston) has extended the overall lifespan of my phone by at least another year, and is slim enough to fit in my small travel bag, a zippered one with an adjustable strap I sling across my chest (another must-have for any traveler, in my opinion). Reducing waste and getting more life out of the things I already own is a great sustainability hack and it also reduces personal costs (the iPhone 15 is $800, yikes!).
Sign Off
There are lots of ways to reduce your personal waste and ecological impact even when traveling, and they don’t all have to be massive changes to your itinerary. Finding restaurants that source their food locally, packing your own travel snacks, and even having a powerbank or sewing kit to get a little more use out of what you already own are simple ways to start. Often, they even lead to finding interesting places to eat you’d never have considered otherwise and give your budget a little more room for souvenirs or events rather than essentials.
Overall, living at Kasteel Well has certainly required me to adjust my routine since I’m so far from home, but it’s been a great experience to get to travel and enjoy a more tight knit community than in the larger Boston campus. Keeping it sustainable is a pretty simple endeavor with that in mind—there’s so much to see nearby that I don’t need to travel far and fly a lot to have fun, bringing my own travel supplies like food is convenient aside from avoiding single-use packaging, and shopping local rather than ordering online is a travel excursion all on its own!