Friday, February 20, 2009

Today we had our second school related excursion.  We went to the city of Rotterdam.  The weather did not cooperate.  It was cold, dreary, and misting.  This put a damper on touring.  We took the 9:04 am train and it took us about a half hour to get there.  Rotterdam is very different from the other cities in The Netherlands I have visited.  The city center was bombed by the Germans in 1940 at the start of World War II.  Because of this, most of the historic buildings are gone.  Some were spared though.  The city hall and an art museum were not bombed because they believed that records were important and the leaders, including Hitler, had a passion for art.  Because the city center was leveled, new, modern architecture now fills this space.  When walking you can actually see the line of what was destroyed by the bombing and what remains.  We walked down a street and to our left were new skyscrapers and to the right were the typical brick Dutch buildings.  The city takes pride in its modern architecture and design.  People are constantly tearing down and rebuilding structures.  Personally, I like the charm of the historic buildings rather than the center of Rotterdam.  In some ways, the city center reminds me of Chicago. 

For most of the day, we walked around and Steef pointed out sites of interest.  We did stop at a couple of museums.  The first museum we went to was the Boijmans van Beumingen Museum.  The museum had many different types of art including mediaeval artifacts, modern objects, 17^th Century Dutch art, and international Impressionist art.  I saw pieces by Rembrandt, Van Gough, Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Monet.  We were at the museum for probably two hours which was a little much especially since it was lunch time. 

For lunch we were given 10 Euro for lunch money.  We were taken to an area of the city that had many choices.  We were given an hour for lunch.  Sara, Kyler, Joel, and I decided to go into a small pub which was advertising warm sandwiches.  We sat down and ordered our drinks.  After we received our drinks our waiter seemed to disappear.  We asked for a menu which took a half hour to get.  After a lot of frustration, we paid for our drinks and left since we only had twenty minutes left for lunch.  Kyler and Joel went to Subway and Sara and I went to a small sandwich shop.  I ordered a toasted ham and cheese sandwich which was very good.  The service at this small shop was fabulous.  The man was willing to translate the entire menu for us, which I told him was not necessary. 

We met Steef and Dennis and once again began to walk around the city.  We saw more special architecture.  We were shown a section of really interesting condos.  They are really hard to describe.  Hopefully pictures help a little.  They are yellow cubes tilted on their sides.  One of these condos is a museum so that people can see what it looks like to live in one of these unique homes.  It was interesting.  Steef and Dennis guessed that each one would be about 200,000 to 250,000 Euros to purchase. 

Rotterdam has either the first or second largest harbor in the world depending on who you talk to.  The Rhine River goes through most of Europe including Rotterdam.  Many goods enter the Rotterdam Harbor and are then sent throughout Europe.  We did not see the harbor but did see a part of the river.