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Borrels, Canal Swims and social spaces – Exploring Amsterdam through my google maps of saved gems
By Hannah Castenskiold, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands I have found it so useful creating google maps folders like this for different cities that I’ve lived in. Especially when friends come and visit, or even when I am visiting new cities, I save places so that I can remember them for the future. Having friends and family come visit is definitely one of the perks about choosing Amsterdam for your year abroad, and has given me extra excuses to do the ‘touristy’ things or take them to these special places around the city. So, I thought it would be useful for any future visitors or future year abroad-ers, to collate all…
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Why you should make Albania your next place to visit
By Hannah Castenskiold, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands Being on a year abroad is one of the easiest ways to catch the travel bug. For a group of us in Amsterdam, as much as we love this city, UvA’s easter holiday was the perfect opportunity to explore somewhere new. After a while of negotiating the cookies of skyscanner and rome2rio, we found that taking the bus to Brussels then flying to Tirana, Albania was the cheapest option, and to our luck, one of the best, undiscovered places Europe has to offer.
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Rekindling the City Spark: A Guide to Returning to Dam After the Christmas Break
By Hannah Castenskiold, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands After spending nearly six months travelling away from home, I finally returned back home for the Christmas holidays, gleefully met by family, friends and more importantly, my dog. It was a precious three weeks to relax, rest and catch up with everyone, following one of my most memorable and adventurous years so far. Yet it made returning to Amsterdam feel almost daunting and I found myself unsure whether I had booked my plane back too early.
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Navigating a new city
By Hannah Castenskiold, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands As a Geography student, it only came naturally to me to map out the journey of moving and settling into the city of Amsterdam. I decided to use story maps as a way of visually recording the chronological order of funny experiences whilst moving in, in hope to share with others the ups and downs of a big move!










