Rotterdam
Peter, Kati and I went to Rotterdam on Saturday, and I liked it a lot. Rotterdam has a lot more cranes than I'm used to seeing in the Netherlands, and a lot less in the way of postcard-pretty buildings. And yes, I know why that is. Everyone keeps pointing it out and teasing me about it, and the only sensible reply I've been able to think of is "oh, you mean like Coventry?" because it's kind of hard to know what else to say.
Rotterdam is very modern, and full of strange cubic buildings and interesting architecture. Having seen the photos of Rotterdam after the war, there were very, very few buildings left standing and they had a massive need to reconstruct the city pretty much from the ground up. Despite this, the city has a real sense of character to it; you'd know where you were if you arrived blindfolded, and there's a real sense of atmosphere around.
The new building at centraal station meant that getting out of the station itself took a little imagination. The area round the station reminded me a bit of the area around the Boston Aquarium a couple of years ago, when the big dig was still in full swing - not all that high-rise, but enthusiastic with the hoardings and full of a confused sort of energy. Having found the tourist information, we set off to find the cathedral.
The Laurenskerk is stunning. When they rebuilt it, they made it very simple inside; soaring white walls and pale coloured glass, except for the one window high behind the alter. When we visited they were setting up a theatre in the middle of the nave, but the church still shows every sign of being alive, and actually used, rather than the rather warehouse like atmosphere you can get in St Pauls and Canterbury in England.
next, after a certain degree of wandering about looking at weird cubist buildings, we found our way to the maritime museum, which I'll write a proper review about otherwise this entry will be far too long. I'm also going to write a proper review of the euromast (next stop on the trip).
After the Euromast we walked through the park and found a cafe next to the harbour to have a beer in. The picture of the swan was taken there. Then we had dinner in a chinese restaurant - it was very nice, and if I hadn't pulled my normal trick of forgetting where it was or what it was called I'd write a proper review! - and went home again.
The Euromast is a large tower, shaped similarly to the CN tower in Toronto, although admittedly much shorter. It costs about 8 euros, which I think is really good value, particularly as no-one tries to charge you extra to go up in the euroscoop at the top.
From the platform, you get a really amazing view of Rotterdam (it's a weird feeling to watch a helicopter swoop under you.) Whilst it isn't as high as its American equivalents, neither is Rotterdam; you can see a really long way with absolutely no competition on the skyline, and the views are stunning. We were really lucky with the sunshine too. The platform is totally open, and the fence comes to mid-chest height, so I was actually quite nervous about the height. Silly old me.
You can go up another few metres, to a height of 112m, and board the Euroscoop which is a glass fronted elevator thing that goes up almost to the full 180m height of the mast.At 96m there's a brasserie, which we ignored, but I'd imagine it'd be a pretty good place to take someone you wanted to impress!
So my new ambition? It turns out that you can abseil off the top in summer for about 45 Euros. I missed it this year, which might be a good thing. I'm not totally sure i could make myself step off the edge without so much as a wall to lean on. And how embarrassing would it be if I was actually stuck up there? But at the same time, how much of a story would that be? So somebody remind me next year, that this year, I said I'd abseil off the Euromast.
The clearest example of this was the Harbour Live! exhibition in the first floor. This was a large map, where you could see the size of Rotterdam's port now and if you walked round the other side, a few key landmarks in its development frmo a small city in the 17th century until its massive post war expansion. WHich is fine.
The 20 minute video, with no narration at all, in any language, however, was about 15 minutes too long. Repeated clips of some guys walloping a rivet - fine - I get the idea that you built ships. About three minutes too long of cranes lifting the same bale of goods; the tape isn't all that well edited, and the message could have got across in half the time. Then an extended feature where the SOS call bleeped for several minutes - long enough to start upsetting me, to be honest, and then some pictures of a turtle (so did the sailors drown? Is the message that the sea is dangeruos, or that you're proud of your defenses and...er... turtles? Does anyone know if there are turtles in the Maas?). There are a lot of these unanswered questions, buried amongst some pretty pictures and model ships. I would have liked to learn more about the conditions in Steerage and first class on the cruise ships, for example, or why the Berlin sank rather than just that she did. I had a lot of fun - see the picture of me looking drippy that I made at the computer terminal - but it's definately not one of the best museums I've been to.
|
|
|||
|
|
