By Sustainability Research Fellow Katie Koenig
With the hindsight of winter break, it’s a lot easier to pinpoint the things that really worked out for move out and the flight back to Boston, and the things that really didn’t.
For starters, I was so glad I had so little to pack during finals weekend—a weird schedule in and of itself, where our final exams took place through the weekend after our last week of classes in scheduled blocks, with a couple days to pack and relax until our flight on a Wednesday. I had personally packed just enough to fit in my duffle and a large tote bag (a rarity among students’ checked bags), but it did mean that I barely spent a couple hours packing.
I managed it when packing for the semester by bringing very little clothing, a lot of layered outfits, and only two jackets. Since I went during the fall semester, the weather was decently temperate, so I didn’t have to worry about a ton of big, bulky coats, just the one overcoat I wore on the plane.
Another prep thing that finally paid off was all of my studying and work in the last month of classes to prepare for exams. I didn’t have many sit down exams, but I had at least two final projects per class, generally a mix of presentations and essays. Although I crammed for some of those essays, I already knew what I wanted to write about and had gotten a head start on my research sources, at least, if not my outlines, which was a massive boon.
I won’t go too into detail about the farewell party the castle staff, mainly Office of Student Affairs (OSA), threw for us, but I will say that the local bar, De Buun, had a sendoff night for us American students the Monday before we left, which was sweet. (Normally, America night was on Wednesdays, but the owner decided to throw his own farewell party for us.)
Actually flying out was a haul. Wednesday morning, our wakeup call was at four in the morning to hop on buses for our ten am flight. Seeing as the castle party was the night prior, most of us just pulled all-nighters. It’s debatable whether that was a good idea or not, but it was fun to continue our hangout beyond midnight when the official party started winding down. Sleeping on the bus and the plane was a must, of course.
There was a period where I was scared I wouldn’t even be able to get my ticket, seeing as there was some confusion about confirmation codes for the group flight, especially since I was the second student in line to get our tickets, but it worked out (shout out to Jordy, one of the OSA staff, who escorted us to security, for helping figure that out). Security itself was fine, and the flight was an annoying experience that I mostly slept or dozed through. We were released as soon as the plane landed and we got through Boston customs, so all of us students split off at the airport. Personally, I had plans to stay in Boston for that week, which ended up lining up with Boston finals.
Although it was a little bittersweet to say goodbye to the castle and the Netherlands as a whole, I had a great time and was more than ready to go home at the end of it. It was an amazing experience full of travel (and, admittedly, academic stress), but three months was a pretty good amount of time for me to be satisfied with, personally.
Hopefully, this series has helped you plan your own excursions, whether for the Kasteel program or in your personal life, but Kasteel was a blast for me, for all that it admittedly came with a price tag.
I do have plans to return to Europe after graduating Emerson, namely finally getting to see all of Delphi that I wanted to but couldn’t during fall semester. Fortunately, like all the castle staff will tell you if you ever go yourself, Europe isn’t going anywhere.