Getting pissed on trains is the European counterpart of tailgating. On the way to Rotterdam, there's a group that seems to be going to a match: a steady psst of beer cans opening and loud Dutch conversation, breaking off now and then into unkind but funny imitations of British soccer fans. The ticket-checker comes by. The one on the train to Veenendaal was avuncular and had a neat white beard, like Santa got his act together after a health scare, and I was hoping they were all like that; but there's actually a disappointing variety.
Rotterdam is full of striking new buildings. The new Market Hall is a slender apartment building bent into an arch. On the glass side in large capital letters: "GAAN MET DIE BANAAN!": "go with that banana". I filed this away as a valuable Dutch phrase. As well as saying hello and thank you, I can urge people to go with bananas. Nonsense phrases are good to know, because they let you seem wise and mysterious; less like a buffoonish tourist and more like a cryptic sage.
- I asked him if he wanted a receipt, and he told me to go with a banana.
- How gnomic.
Sadly, it's actually a common Dutch phrase that just means 'go for it'.
Rotterdam's architecture is infused with the spirit of going with bananas. It also shows the importance of choosing bananas carefully, and the short shelf-life of bananas. The Nazis bombed the city in 1940, and the allies bombed it some more during the occupation. Afterwards, rather than rebuild, Rotterdamers swept away the wreckage and started work on a daring new city. There were all kinds of experiments as visionary architects probed possible futures. What if the people of the future want to live in wedge-shaped apartments? Or tilted cubes? Or in upside-down bus stations under the sea where loud polka music plays forever? No, that's crazy -- or is it?
The major new buildings range from stunning to pleasantly weird. The older ones seem less successful, which is probably a bad sign. The designs may not all be timelessly beautiful, but Rotterdam's determined to be a kind of living museum of modern architecture, which means collecting as many architectural ideas and fashions as possible. At the moment, the rule is that you can't just design a building; you have to design a bunch of buildings and make it look like they're fighting. Some sort of statement seems to be expected even of small things.
- Here's the parking garage entrance we'd like approval for...
- Take it away and make it look more like a crash-landed UFO. And put a blobby sculpture out front.
Erasmus Bridge is one of the best new structures, a thing like a frail white harp that connects, well, the bit of the city I'm in to a different bit. It looks somehow like it might at some point fold itself into an origami crane and float peacefully out to sea. Just across it is the Floating Forest (a bunch of trees in bobbing buoys) and a sort of line of 3 joined geodesic bubbles sticking out into the water. Further up is the Hotel New York and the new Rotterdam Cruise Terminal, which replaced the one from which Holland-America ships sailed for North America (one of them carried my father and his family).
On Monday, in terrible weather, I went out to Delft and The Hague. This is very easy, because the Dutch train system is like a nationwide metro. Tickets are valid all day, and there is a train from everywhere to everywhere else every fifteen minutes. Delft is everything it's supposed to be: charming, pretty, full of tour groups. In the New Church, a marble memorial to William the Silent and a big orange swoosh on the floor lined with plaques about Dutch rulers and royals. Otherwise, one of those bare Dutch churches significant mostly for what's missing: the Catholic ornamentation smashed by crowds during the reformation and the tomb markers of aristocrats chipped away during the French occupation out of enthusiasm for égalité. At one end, a thing like an egg fried in glitter marks the entrance to a grim exhibit of modern religious art. The Hague I have pretty much nothing to say about, because I just wandered around it in the rain, recoiled from the lineup for the Mauritshuis, and left again, wishing they'd never made that stupid Girl With the Pearl Earring movie.
The countryside is table-flat, hatched with ditches and canals, and wandered over by cows and sheep. The rain was making everything pretty soggy, but the Dutch will know what to do with it. They're probably somehow using it to drain a sea somewhere. Actually, while I'm here, I'd like to start an internet conspiracy theory about the shrinking of the world's inland seas being the work of bored Dutch engineers.
Rotterdam has an old section that survived the war: Delfshaven. This is a long walk from the Cool District (not a branding effort by real estate companies; there was a medieval town here named Cool). Through Het Park, which is full of portapotties and urinals that have been making their way there from around the country and now await deployment for yet another public celebration (probably Liberation Day; May 5). Around a traffic interchange that involves at least 5 pedestrian crossings, most of them over bike lanes and tram tracks as well as roads. And then signs pointing you through long planned blocks of modern low-rises on to 'Historisch Delfshaven'.
Old Delfshaven is worth it, though, for its canal houses, drawbridges, and old ships. The names of famous Dutch admirals and the V.O.C. of the Dutch East India Company crop up on street signs and buildings. There's even a windmill. You take a picture of it and get a little thrill of satisfaction, like you've fulfilled your function as a tourist in the Netherlands.
Rotterdam is full of striking new buildings. The new Market Hall is a slender apartment building bent into an arch. On the glass side in large capital letters: "GAAN MET DIE BANAAN!": "go with that banana". I filed this away as a valuable Dutch phrase. As well as saying hello and thank you, I can urge people to go with bananas. Nonsense phrases are good to know, because they let you seem wise and mysterious; less like a buffoonish tourist and more like a cryptic sage.
- I asked him if he wanted a receipt, and he told me to go with a banana.
- How gnomic.
Sadly, it's actually a common Dutch phrase that just means 'go for it'.
Rotterdam's architecture is infused with the spirit of going with bananas. It also shows the importance of choosing bananas carefully, and the short shelf-life of bananas. The Nazis bombed the city in 1940, and the allies bombed it some more during the occupation. Afterwards, rather than rebuild, Rotterdamers swept away the wreckage and started work on a daring new city. There were all kinds of experiments as visionary architects probed possible futures. What if the people of the future want to live in wedge-shaped apartments? Or tilted cubes? Or in upside-down bus stations under the sea where loud polka music plays forever? No, that's crazy -- or is it?
The major new buildings range from stunning to pleasantly weird. The older ones seem less successful, which is probably a bad sign. The designs may not all be timelessly beautiful, but Rotterdam's determined to be a kind of living museum of modern architecture, which means collecting as many architectural ideas and fashions as possible. At the moment, the rule is that you can't just design a building; you have to design a bunch of buildings and make it look like they're fighting. Some sort of statement seems to be expected even of small things.
- Here's the parking garage entrance we'd like approval for...
- Take it away and make it look more like a crash-landed UFO. And put a blobby sculpture out front.
Erasmus Bridge is one of the best new structures, a thing like a frail white harp that connects, well, the bit of the city I'm in to a different bit. It looks somehow like it might at some point fold itself into an origami crane and float peacefully out to sea. Just across it is the Floating Forest (a bunch of trees in bobbing buoys) and a sort of line of 3 joined geodesic bubbles sticking out into the water. Further up is the Hotel New York and the new Rotterdam Cruise Terminal, which replaced the one from which Holland-America ships sailed for North America (one of them carried my father and his family).
On Monday, in terrible weather, I went out to Delft and The Hague. This is very easy, because the Dutch train system is like a nationwide metro. Tickets are valid all day, and there is a train from everywhere to everywhere else every fifteen minutes. Delft is everything it's supposed to be: charming, pretty, full of tour groups. In the New Church, a marble memorial to William the Silent and a big orange swoosh on the floor lined with plaques about Dutch rulers and royals. Otherwise, one of those bare Dutch churches significant mostly for what's missing: the Catholic ornamentation smashed by crowds during the reformation and the tomb markers of aristocrats chipped away during the French occupation out of enthusiasm for égalité. At one end, a thing like an egg fried in glitter marks the entrance to a grim exhibit of modern religious art. The Hague I have pretty much nothing to say about, because I just wandered around it in the rain, recoiled from the lineup for the Mauritshuis, and left again, wishing they'd never made that stupid Girl With the Pearl Earring movie.
The countryside is table-flat, hatched with ditches and canals, and wandered over by cows and sheep. The rain was making everything pretty soggy, but the Dutch will know what to do with it. They're probably somehow using it to drain a sea somewhere. Actually, while I'm here, I'd like to start an internet conspiracy theory about the shrinking of the world's inland seas being the work of bored Dutch engineers.
Rotterdam has an old section that survived the war: Delfshaven. This is a long walk from the Cool District (not a branding effort by real estate companies; there was a medieval town here named Cool). Through Het Park, which is full of portapotties and urinals that have been making their way there from around the country and now await deployment for yet another public celebration (probably Liberation Day; May 5). Around a traffic interchange that involves at least 5 pedestrian crossings, most of them over bike lanes and tram tracks as well as roads. And then signs pointing you through long planned blocks of modern low-rises on to 'Historisch Delfshaven'.
Old Delfshaven is worth it, though, for its canal houses, drawbridges, and old ships. The names of famous Dutch admirals and the V.O.C. of the Dutch East India Company crop up on street signs and buildings. There's even a windmill. You take a picture of it and get a little thrill of satisfaction, like you've fulfilled your function as a tourist in the Netherlands.
