Rotterdam - part 1

Rotterdam is the city where I spent most of my time in the Netherlands and, honestly, it was a pleasant surprise for me!

Rotterdam is a dynamic and vibrant international city. Everywhere you go you see foreign people, from different origins, which gives to the city the international atmosphere you feel everywhere (I was told that around there are 500.000 people living there, from more than 170 different nationalities, but I don’t know if it’s true. I think it is, but… :D).

This global feeling is due to the fact that Rotterdam is situated on the water and for it has the largest port in Europe. For many years it was considered the world’s largest port, but recently ports built in Southwest Asia (like Singapore and Shanghai) have taken over its world leading position. But the harbor functions as an important transit point for transport of bulk and other goods between the European continent and other parts of the world.

This made Rotterdam live what probably was the hardest moment of the city’s history: at the beginning of the Second World War, on 14 May 1940, almost the entire city centre was devastated by a German bombardment.

The Netherlands remained neutral in World War I and World War II, but was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940 during the Second World War, forcing it to become a member of the allied forces. The country was quickly overrun and then occupied.

The heart of the city was almost completely destroyed and much of the older buildings in the center of the city were simply brought down. It was a strategic action of the German army because it would make the Dutch people to surrender to the invasion and also it would avoid the port to serve to their opposition. During the occupation over 100,000 Dutch Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

It’s really sad and I felt that it still is a difficult topic for them to talk, although the long time passed. There’s in the city a statue named “Stad zonder hart” (city without a heart), which is a symbol of the pain they still feel and a way to honor the dead people and the history of Rotterdam.

In fact it’s not so easy to forget it because due to the bombing, Rotterdam is a city that was rebuilt. The city that is so unlike Holland's other cities: it’s modern, very modern. You can hardly see pre-war buildings in this part of Rotterdam, few of them have remained (the City Hall survived the bombing campaign, it is a beautiful building, making us to imagine how beautiful the other buildings probably were). And the fact of Rotterdam has few things from its past makes the people uncomfortable and unhappy, specially the elders, always repeating in the conversations you have with them how beautiful the city was before that – and how they think it’s ugly now (!!!!!).

But the center of Rotterdam has become the site of ambitious new architecture, famous in the country and abroad. Now, the city is going through somewhat of a renaissance. Many years later, as Fenix, Rotterdam has risen from the ashes with a new, modern city centre: new styles of apartments, office buildings and recreation facilities resulted in a more 'livable' city center with a new skyline.

There are some buildings that are marks of this movement of “avant-garde” architecture:

• The Cube Houses (in downtown Rotterdam), are modern residential architecture buildings built in the end of the 20th century. At first it looks odd, but when you get used to them, it becomes interesting and you start imagining how it is to live there.
  
  
• The Euromast (Eurotower), the famous tall tower, which has long been a major tourist attraction, because from the top of the tower you have a fabulous view from the city;
  
  
• The Erasmus Bridge, a cable stayed white bridge. It’s very beautiful and one of the symbols of the city.
  
  
• The “Delftse Poort”, a 151 meters office building, which houses Nationale Nederlanden insurance company, part of ING Group.

Other nice thing in the city is the beach. In Rotterdam there isn’t natural beach, but they’ve built an artificial beach between the two city bridges (Erasmus Bridge and the Willems Bridge). Swimming was not possible, unfortunately, so the people go there all dressed and just to chill out :) (who wants real beaches can go to Hoek van Holland or Den Haag, which has a really nice beach!).


Rotterdam is the second biggest city in the Netherlands (the first is Amsterdam) and the industrial heart of the Netherlands. The port has made Rotterdam the trading city of the Netherlands and because of that you can see A LOT of advocacy offices in the city. Really, I’ve never seen so many offices in the same city as in Rotterdam. For sure it’s a good place for lawyers to live – at least probably all of them are employed. :P


Diverse is for sure a word that applies to Rotterdam. Nearly half the population is not born or have at least one parent who is not born in the Netherlands. And most of them are Muslins (mulçulmanos). Everywhere you go in the city you see a lot of muslins and women using veil.

It’s really nice, although they don’t like it very much (I met a girl in the train coming back to Rotterdam from Paris, and when I told her that I liked Rotterdam and I could easily live there, she was so surprised! She said that hardly any European would say that, because of the high number of muslins living in the city).

It was really ok for me, I really liked this (maybe because it’s really different from what I’m used to see in Brazil). But I have to confess that it was shocking for me when I saw for the first time a woman using burka.

It was just the first weekend I was there and I was at the supermarket, buying food for my dinner, when I saw a woman all dressed in a black burka. It’s was really shocking at the first moment, I wanted to look but I couldn’t do it (I didn’t know if she was there with her husband and I didn’t want problems :P).

Maybe it was the moment that has made me feel that I definitively was in Europe. And it was really nice. Then I became so excited that I almost asked her to take a picture with me :P