Rotterdam by Design

It takes just over an hour to get from the centre of Amsterdam, by train, to Rotterdam, the second biggest city in the Netherlands, but we still set an alarm on Tuesday morning, not wanting to waste an ounce of sunlight when the forecast was calling for temperamental conditions. From Uilenstede, Kayla and I took the metro to Centraal Station, and switched over to a larger train in the humming station.

“ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?!”

Along the way to Rotterdam, we passed through some of Holland’s more recognizable settlements—Haarlem, The Hague, and Delft—before reaching our destination. Rotterdam has a cool-and-it-knows-it vibe, at least partially attributable to the fact that much of the city was destroyed by German bombings in the Second World War. With much of the historical façade removed, Rotterdam charged headfirst into the twenty and twenty-first century by embracing ambitious and unique architecture. That starts at Rotterdam Centraal Station, only one year old with a mountain of an awning pointing toward the city centre with sleek precision.

It only took us about twenty minutes to walk to our hostel, near to the edge of the Nieuwe Maas, a distributary of the mighty Rhine and the mouth of the Port of Rotterdam, the busiest port in Europe and, up until 2002, the busiest in the world. That little jaunt only took about twenty minutes, but we still passed by oodles of strange designs in buildings and statues lining the walkway.

After we’d slung our few worldy possessions into our 14-person dorm room at Hostel ROOM, we set out to see the city.

That journey had an unexpected beginning at the Natural History Museum, at the start of the green lawn marking the Museumpark in downtown Rotterdam. A hanging skeleton of some oceanic monster caught our attention and pulled us in, but the sheer volume of the collection, several hundred thousand collection units, made it a real highlight of our Europe trip thus far. Think about it: where else can you start by peering into glass displays of shiny sea gems and beetles . . .

. . . and ultimately end of moving through stuffed masses of the biggest, baddest, strangest creatures that we co-habit the globe with?

By the way, did you spot anything weird in those pictures? The green horn indicates that it’s a fake—the original horns were stolen in 2011, and likely sold in East Asia, where there’s a strong spiritual belief in their healing power.

If nothing else, the Natural History Museum is a reminder that we share the world with a lot of weirdos. It’s actually kind of amazing that all of these things can survive together—even if the human need to develop and urbanize has been a constant threat to more than a few of the species gathered at the museum. One specific display plays homage to how some animals—cats, foxes, herons—have all had to adapt their own “wild” lives to suit the city habitat.

Of course, not everything in the museum is the sort of you might run into around the corner. When it comes to some extinct species, like this ancient leviathan whale whose raptorial teeth are reminiscent of a bad guy from Super Metroid, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

It felt like we spanned all the continents in a single afternoon, and it was only midday just yet. Quick kiss goodbye, and off we went again.

The sun lent a bit of warmth to an otherwise brisk day as we strolled through Museumpark to the Het Nieuwe Instituut. We thought this was the architecture museum in Rotterdam, and were looking forward to a guided explanation of the creative urge that rebuilt this city. Instead, the spacious hall holds the Temporary Fashion Museum—most museums have fashion displays as a part of their collection, but none have a dedicated, full-on museum of fashion. This is an experiment, to see if the public likes the idea and would consider a permanent museum.

Speaking for two members of said public: no. The museum is basically Costco if they didn’t sell anything. Or maybe it was all one big avant-garde showroom that we weren’t trendy enough to understand. That might be it, considering that we couldn’t even figure out how to get to the next level of the museum or understand why a stick of ordinary lipstick was in a glass container, next to a walkthrough black box with a disco light hanging from the ceiling, dubbed “the Club.”

Screw it, if the architecture museum has to be replaced by the warehouse for the rejected Sears catalogue collection, we’d just see some architecture ourselves. We walked through the Oude Haven—literally the Old Harbour, before the busy port outgrew this part of the city.

Our little foray ended with the Cube Houses, an architectural oddity that doubles as a neighbourhood. Imagine a Rubik’s Cube, mounted precariously on its corner. Imagine that supported by a column. Alright, imagine hollowing out the inside of the Cube and rearranging all your stuff to somehow make the horizontal part livable. And all the other lunatics next door and down the road are doing the same exact thing.

If you’re not following me, have a look.

The houses are one of the spots you have to see in Rotterdam. You can even go through at least one of the houses for a few euro, if you want the real inside deal—and if you’re really interested, some of them are for sale, too. Several dozen cubes, representing (and bearing striking resemblance to) an urban forest, are connected to each other, giving plenty to gawk at.

Nearby is the Blaak Market—not to be confused with the Black Market, although in amongst the fantastical array of produce and electronics and clothing, I bet you could find some illegal stuff.

The market stretched on forever, it seemed, all at the feet of the gigantic Markthal, an upright horseshoe-looking building with apartments around the outer rim, and stalls within offering everything for a hungry person, and certain doom for a sweet-toothed glutton.

And, wouldn’t you know it, the rain that had been ominously announcing its arrival all day finally unleashed. Typical Dutch weather. Fortunately, there was also a typical silly girl on standby, waiting to sing a weather-appropriate song.

We waited out the worst of the weather inside the market, and somehow held back our hands from a veritable feast of candy and an inevitable sugar crash at the hostel. The sun afforded us more shot at the outdoors, giving us a view of the Erasmusbrug. Spanning the breadth of the Maas River and supporting a 139 m steel pylon secured with 40 suspension cables, it’s little wonder the so-called Swan is an icon for a city that doesn’t buy into the concrete jungle mentality, but instead adds flair to the busy city lifestyle.

Meanwhile, back at the hostel, it was about time for quiz night and happy hour. Isn’t it weird how you’re nowhere near ready for happy hour to end when it does? We had a fun night in Rotterdam, topping off the evening with a desperate search for French fries in the midnight hour.

Somewhere between when we settled into our bunk beds and when someone’s alarm went off at 6:30, I’m pretty sure a small parade traipsed through our room. There was definitely a party downstairs that weren’t too bothered about anything resembling quiet hours, and some dude had the gall to snore most of the night. Considering that it was just Kayla who heard that last one though, I probably shouldn’t drag his name through the muck too much.

Anyway, the bottom line is that there’s a reason dorm rooms are cheap. All told though, the hostel was a nice find in the heart of Rotterdam, and if we’d thought of brining earplugs we probably would have had a nice rest.

The whole motivation for coming to Rotterdam, meanwhile, was a school outing to the offices of the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, at Rotterdam-The Hague Airport (just a short bus ride from Centraal Station). The state police force, a militarized unit, dates back from William I in 1814, and concerns itself with a host of functions in the Netherlands. Since 1994, that has included security at all the airports in the country.

Our presentation focused on the border control aspect: what happens when someone claims asylum, what sort of things the border guards look for (our informant pointblank told us about the profiling that happens amongst guards, both in terms of the actual individual in the lineup and the route that the aircraft took to get to the Netherlands), what happens when someone doesn’t leave the country, despite having no legal right to be there—basically, a step-by-step analysis that ignores the bigger sociological and ethical questions and instead jumps right into the functional guide of an incredibly busy and essential role.

As we walked through the temporary holding cells where you can’t even bring you belt (suicide prevention), it’s hard not to think of the 4,000,000 Syrian refugees. I’m half a dozen months away from a law degree, and the procedures and processes and bureaucratic jargon are swirling around my head like aimless pinballs with no High Score in sight—imagine someone fleeing a civil war with just the clothes on their back and a language barrier in every direction.

Architecture and design can be liberating, and yet it can also form our prisons. We’re remarkably good at that. Sometimes we can’t tell which it is, until we look back with some hindsight.

With that sobering thought on my mind and the rain coming in full force, it was back to the train station and to Amsterdam, where both Kayla and I were exhausted and sore and wondering how in the name of God I once lived out of a backpack for seven months. And, let’s be clear, enjoyed it.

Despite all the cool structures and art in Rotterdam, Uilenstede and that shower that still floods every morning never looked so good.

Cheers,

rb