Goedenavond!

For the last few days, I’ve been hanging out in Rotterdam. I’m very lucky that this is my third visit to Rotterdam. I’m also lucky that I really like the Beautiful South song that is its namesake, as it gets stuck in my little brain every time. Rotterdam is one of the easiest places to visit from Hull, being at the end of one of the two ferry routes from Hull as well as a quick train journey from Amsterdam Schiphol (one of about 3 daily destinations from almost-too-wee Humberside Airport).

It’s a superb city and one I would happily keep returning to. I’m glad also that it makes a great base for exploring the southern part of the Netherlands, as there a few places I wanted to reach.

Firstly, The Hague. Home of the International Court of Justice and the international Criminal Court along with numerous other international organisations, plus part of the Dutch government, it is a place that swims in history and jurisprudence, which suits me as a current student of academic law just wonderfully. It’s also home to a fine, fine art collection, photography museum, Escher museum and many other grand institutions. It’s also 5km from the seaside! Yes, Schevenigen just down the road is Scarborough, Whitby and Brighton (with a sandy beach) rolled in to one, with a little but not a great deal of tackiness and tat. It, like The Hague, which was busy hosting Veterans’ Day, is jolly good at hosting things – the day I visited was the last day of the week of celebrations to mark the end of the Round the World Yacht Race, with an excellent fan village sat on the beach. That huge, expansive beach, which was great for a saunter, then a paddle. I was going to swim as the water was wonderfully warm, until the jellyfish (squishyfishes) put me off. I’m still haunted by a mild sting received as a teenager swimming off the coast of France.

I also popped to Utrecht and wandered around the Het Spoorwegenmusueum – the national railway museum. It’s in one of Utrecht’s former branch line stations, closed in the 1930s and re-opened in the 1950s as a museum. The station has a yard with sidings, which is handy for the number of locos in the collection, with some rolling stock. Properly haunting, rather than a mild aversion to jellyfish, was the careful way that a goods wagon was on a siding by itself, with a narrative about the number of people deported by train across Europe during World War II, including a number from Utrecht. The carriage is an replica that enables you to walk in, see the claustrophobia of a wagon with the windows blocked off and hear the voices of survivors who recounted their days and days waiting to arrive, in these instances, at Bergen Belsen. Just outside the museum there is a memorial to the 12,000 Jewish people who did not survive the war or come back to Utrecht. The museum buildings, in full 1920s and 1930s rail gorgeousness, are lovely to wander around, with excellent collections of headboards and an exhibition on the marketing and brand of the Dutch national railway – the yellow and blue that is now so familiar was a shocking choice when proposed in the 1960s, but the Board of Directors knew that they had to increase the popularity and passenger numbers of a railway that had lost 100 million guiders in its previous year of operation. Launched in 1968, the museum celebrates one of the most recognisable parts of Dutch culture today. The museum also included a 1950s railway buffet with (still working) vending machines for chips and croquettes: I’m partial to vending machine food (I love automation when it comes to produce, and I put this down to living out of vending machines at high school for a couple of years for the quick convenience of lunch and being able to partake in many lunchtime activities, despite Mum expecting me to eat rather more healthily from the canteen).

I also hired a bicycle yesterday and cycled to Delft. Cycling in the Netherlands is a true joy. Cycling absolutely has primacy here and I love the country for it. It includes an excellent network of cycle routes that join villages, towns and cities together; well sign-posted, with street lighting at night-times including in remote stretches, and navigation aided by following numbered routes until you get to whether you need to get to. I have picked up a cycling map of the area and it has just whetted my appetite for more. Delft is absolutely lovely and only 14k from Rotterdam; thus an easy cycle ride, a lot of which was canal-side and ran through a couple of picture-postcard villages.

I absolutely love bombing about on a bike; it was a stroke of genius by Mum to give my brother and me each a bicycle as we started high school and the confidence to cycle on the roads. It was a quick and easy part of independence that I have cherished ever since. Even with a broken foot several years ago, I absolutely was determined to continue cycling and remember the wonderful look from the lovely chap in Bruges who rented me a bike when I turned up with a slipper plaster cast on one foot; he immediately appreciated the freedom I was looking for by hiring a bike and carrying a local cycling map, and wished me very well for a super bike ride. I cycled to Zeebrugge and forgot for a time the stupid broken foot.

I was kitted out with a lovely mint green Brompton, Betty, for this trip around Europe, but I didn’t bring her in the end. It is at times frustrating not to have the freedom of a bike with me whenever I was, but I’m going to so many more destinations than I originally thought I might, some of which have very tight train connections, and I can hire a bike in pretty much every destination I’m in. In the meantime, Betty is resting up during the heat wave in Britain and will be become my commuting bike and train travelling companion on my return to Britain.

Not it is time for a final run around the wonderful city that is Rotterdam, which a super maritime museum that I had time to visit this time round. Rotterdam hosts the national maritime collection and the former produce harbour is now home to the collection, which also proudly claims one of each model of cargo crane that has worked Rotterdam docks, too. It makes for a brilliant set of shapes at sunset. Another set of shapes is Maashaven, to the south of the city centre, which I have the privilege of looking over each night:

I’ve learned a lot in the last few days and been to some excellent museums and art galleries. I’ve been in grateful receipt of the act of kindness of a stranger, who found the OV-chipkaart – the equivalent of an Oystercard that works on any bus, tram, metro or train in the whole of the Netherlands (oh look, a national public transport network. Who knew?) – that I’d dropped and very helpfully handed it in to a nearby store. I’ve learned a bit more Dutch and had the confidence to speak a bit of it, too.

Tomorrow, Hannover. Somewhere completely new to me – I’m looking forward to it.