Today I went on a day trip to Rotterdam with 2 of my class mates from Dutch class. I went with Paula from Spain and Delilah from England.
See the entire exciting photo collection!
The trip there went a bit of plan. I was supposed to meet them at “Rotterdam Blaak”. I forgot there are 5 Rotterdam XXX stations, and got off 1 to soon at “Rotterdam Zuid”. If you want the most boring train station in Holland, maybe in all Europe, this is it! As the train pulled out, 2 things: a. wrong station, b. next train in 30 minutes. Well, I put the time to very good use, I discovered I have solitaire on my cell phone!
30 minutes later, I joined Delilah and Paula. They were not as fortunate as I to have experienced the life altering wait at Rotterdam Zuid, so they waited for 30 minutes at the correct station.
We went to visit one of the architectural points of interest in Holland, the “Cubist Houses”. Rotterdam was almost totally destroyed by bombing in WW2. After the war, many of the buildings were rebuilt in experimental style. A perfect example are the cubist houses, built in the 1980’s at a 45 degree angle. Going inside the museum house was like walking into a Picasso painting. The walls slope, and windows look out at all sorts of odd angles. The 3rd floor, a sort of “sun room”, had an entire skewed ceiling and walls of little glass windows. And they even had an entire wall of “Lord of the Rings” memorabilia on display (Oh, I AM in heaven!). Interested in living in a cube? Well, for the bargain price of $260,000, you too can live here.
On the way home, I say Holland’s answer to sitting on Santa’s knee. The Dutch have “Sinter Klaus” instead of old St. Nick. Instead of elves, he has “Swarte Petes”, or “Black Petes”….more on Sinter Klaus in another blog…. Kids still line up to sit on his knee just like a US mall-Santa.
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