Who are the people who study and work at TU Delft? We meet them in Humans of TU Delft where they talk about their work or other activities. Recent graduate Nuria Bal (BSc Life Science & Technology, 2017) and industrial engineering student Steffan Roskam love to travel. But for them, how they get to their destination is part of the adventure.
Nuria Bal and Steffan Roskam. (Photo: Heather Montague)
Nuria: “We do hitchhiking competitions starting here in Delft and the goal is to get to another city. The last one we did was to Prague. There are several teams starting at the same place and whoever gets there first wins. The two of us are a team and we have done it many times because AEGEE offers a lot of these kinds of opportunities. There aren’t really rules, but you don’t get into cars if you’re not comfortable with people and you don’t put your bag in and then walk away so people can steal your stuff.”
Steffan: “Once you get there, you meet up with the other students and visit the city together. We leave from the main square in Delft and walk to the highway near IKEA and that’s where we start. We write ‘gas station’ on a piece of cardboard and then just wait for a car to stop. When you are at a gas station you can find people pumping gas and that’s the perfect time to talk to them. And Nuria has a ukulele so sometimes she plays music and that really helps. But when you’re at a traffic light it can take longer to find a lift because you can’t make personal contact with people.”
‘You are in the car for just a while but you get to know each other really fast’
Nuria: “One thing is that you should always try to have fun with it. If you look enthusiastic then people are more likely to stop. We’ve always been so lucky because sometimes people have to wait by the highway all night or sleep at Burger King, but that has never happened to us. The thing I like most is that you meet so many new people. It’s exhausting, but it’s also really fun because for some reason you always have very deep conversations with these people. You are in the car for just a while but you get to know each other really fast.”
Steffan: “For me the best part is the free transport for vacation. You only pay for the hostel when you get there. On our way to Prague a lady picked us up in Germany and it was kind of late in the day. She asked us where we would sleep because we were nowhere near our destination. She made a call to her boyfriend and then told us we could stay at their place. We got there and it was a huge villa.”
Nuria: “They had a huge garden with an outdoor kitchen and a pool. They cooked dinner for us and gave us cocktails. They even had caviar!”
Steffan: “She said we could swim, but we didn’t have any swimsuits so we went skinny dipping. A fun fact is that Nuria pulled the door closed before we went to the pool and it locked. It was pretty late at night and we had to ring the bell to wake the owners up so we could get back in.”
Heather Montague
Also read:
Humans of TU Delft: Tim van Rugge
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