Author: Andrew Kuiken

We have been in Europe for a week and a half now and I have noticed a few different changes.

1. First, lunch does not seem to be a big deal in Europe. When we visit towns for lunch it always seems like a struggle to find a place where you can eat. A lot of places seem to be closed during the lunch hour which is frustrating and difficult to deal with. Also, they don’t have as many “fast food sit down restaurants” such as chipotle, chic-fil-a, five guys, and so forth.
2. Second, the Germans do something at 4pm every day called “coffee and cake”. During this time they take a work break and go to a locks coffee shop for some coffee and some baked goods. (Starbucks are few and far between). Others go home and relax for the time. This afternoon break is nice since it breaks up the regular routine of the day for the companies employees.
3. Third, the portions for food servings are much smaller in Europe than in America. Granted, Americans typically over indulge and get more food than they can handle. However Europeans seem to take too little food and their servings at restaurants are very small compared to the American counterparts.

I have noticed many cultural differences in Europe, from the speed of regular life slowing way down, to the difference styles of work. But the food differences have made an impact on me because I eat a lot.

-Andrew

We visited the Vermeer corporation on Tuesday. I was interested in this visit because the company is actually headquarters in Iowa. Which was funny since that is so close to Michigan and here we are in the Netherlands visiting the company.

I enjoyed learning about how they manufacture their farming and outdoor tools. The facility is the Netherlands was not a manufacturing facility orgibally. But due to a tornado that struck in the United States, this facility was quickly transformed into a manufacturing facility in order to keep up with demand and fulfill order.

It was interesting to watch them assemble the machines as we stood there and spoke with some of the workers and engineers.

Vermeer prides itself on being ahead of the safety curve so to speak. They implement safety features into thief machines before safety regulations are placed on them so they always have the safest machines. Where as competitors wait until the safety regulations are released before making thief machines more safe.

Overall Vermeer was very interesting and a exciting place to visit. They also gave us delicious pastries at the end, always a plus.

Today, myself, Graham, and Dan presented a devotional and gave our group further information about the Flower Gardens in the Netherlands, as well as the storm barrier we visited for the day.

The flower gardens move over 20 million flowers a day, which is incredible because the flowers come from all over the world to be auctioned off at these gardens. The flower auction is so impressive considering 20 million flowers are sold each day, the logistics and the communication that must be flawless in order to continue filling orders.

Our devotional touched on the fact that God took his time in making the flowers with so much beauty and design. So if he put that much attention into creating a flower, it is impossible to measure the amount of time, love, and effort, that went into creating human beings, his children. We can take comfort in the fact that God created us with love and in his image.

We then went to the storm barrier which took over 6 years to complete and protects part of Holland from terrible floods, like the one that happened in 1953.