Rotterdam is where it started to feel like things were coming together. From Amsterdam and The Hague, I learned that travel days were tough for me, even when things went perfectly. And so it was best not to extend myself too far. The ROOM Hostel in Rotterdam is tucked away from the city center, laying nearer to the banks of the not so busy port. This area was a stark contrast to my lodgings in The Hague, with big open skies, baroque buildings and nearby museums and parks. And on the day I arrived, I gave myself permission to see almost none of it.
I sat inside and and enjoyed a comfortable and chill common room, did my laundry and wrote up my post for The Hague. These blog posts are surprisingly time consuming. Both the writing and choosing and editing the photos to accompany them. But, the focused work is gratifying in itself, as well as giving my feet a chance to recover from the stresses the week have put on them.
I’m particularly enjoying tweaking my photos. For the first time in my life, I’ve invested in proper editing software and I find it properly gratifying being able to control exactly how the colors look, how the shot is framed and the narrative that the image conveys. I’m still learning, so hopefully my edits aren’t too heavy-handed, just accentuating what I’d already captured in camera.
Getting Into Rotterdam
It was a gloomy Sunday morning when I set out to explore Rotterdam. I rented a bike from the hostel and spent 5 hours riding 40 kilometers through the city. I found a city that felt distinct from the cousins that I’d already visited. Even though The Hague is only about 20 kilometers from Rotterdam (both cities would fit within the borders of Calgary with plenty of room to spare), the character of each city is unique.
Calgary’s size compared to The Hague and Rotterdam
Rotterdam was subject to heavy German bombardment during World War 2 which ultimately destroyed its entire historic city center. As a result, it is largely a modern city featuring a number of fascinating and experimental architectural choices. Everywhere you turn in the city, you are likely to find a building that looks nothing like anything you’ve seen before. From apartment blocks to corporate skyscrapers to bridges and underpasses. A vibrant and lively city has emerged from the ruins of what came before.
My gloomy Sunday ride took me from the port through the center of the city and beyond into the suburbs where they verge upon the farmlands that surround. The streets were largely empty, at least compared to what I’d experienced in busy Amsterdam. I think this is probably my preferred way to see a city. Allowed to consume it slowly, without feeling in the way or pressured to move along.
In this case, my leisurely feast brought me into the Hillegersberg area. An affluent and green community with a distinct lakeside feel. Huge houses, by Dutch standards, line the banks of two small lakes before leading into streets filled with upper middle-class, single family homes and finally a large park, Lage Bergse Bos (low mountain forest). Having made it this far, I actually passed outside the city limits of Rotterdam and rode through a couple of the tiny hamlets that line the border. These charming villages gave a small taste of Dutch country life, though I imagine they are more homes for wealthy, retirees than rural tulip farmers.
The following day, I set out and explored the center of Rotterdam on foot. On my bike ride, I had briefly seen the Marksthal, a giant food hall in a donut shaped building, and the Kijk Kubus, a set of 40 experimental cube shaped homes tilted on their edge, and I wanted to get a closer look. Along the way, I came across a variety of other architectural delights. Such as, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, housed in a giant mirrored plant pot, the Stadhuis (city hall), one of the only remaining pre-war buildings in the city center, and the Nieuwe Delftse Poort, an art installation raised in tribute of a medieval gate that once stood on the same spot. I rounded out the day enjoying a coffee on the patio of one of the countless cafes that line the streets of Rotterdam Centrum.
One of the questions I’ve been wrestling with, is whether or not I like museums. For the most part, I find myself desperately trying to engage with the works that must be important because someone hung them on the wall for me to look at. And I paid somewhere in the neighbourhood of €20 to look at them, ipso facto, they’re important. But despite their importance, I find that I just don’t connect with the masterpieces of old. I do, however, connect with the weird and the abstract. The modern and the post-modern, the post-post-modern and the post-nihilist-abstract-dada-modern.
To that end, I decided to check out the Kunsthal Rotterdam, a museum of contemporary art just down the road from the hostel. I had hoped to spend Monday morning exploring its small exhibits, so, obviously, I unintentionally purchased a ticket for Tuesday, the day I would be leaving. Turns out the Kunsthal is closed on Monday.
No bother, I would just check out of my hostel, store my bags in a locker and kill the morning at the museum before heading on to Antwerp. And a delightful morning it was, featuring an exhibition on the concept of ‘cute’, its origins in modern culture, its exploitation by capitalists and, most importantly, cat memes. Also on display was a retrospective on the works of Korean artist Haegue Yang, which elicited an emotional response in me, provoked by some very carefully stacked and arranged laundry drying racks. Go figure.
The original cat memes, dating to the late 1800s
All in all, a successful outing to the museum and a good way to round out my time in a city that I very much enjoyed.
Bird Corner
By and large, the birds of Rotterdam were those that had become familiar to me through my time in Amsterdam and the Hague, gulls, crows, jackdaws and pigeons. However, I did pick up a couple new sightings, by the way of Mute Swans, a very amenable Greylag Goose and a playful swarm of Barn Swallows.
As I mentioned, I’ve left the Netherlands and I’m now in Antwerp, Belgium. I’ve got another day and a half left here, and then I’m looking to head on the Ghent and Bruges!
After a week in Amsterdam, it was time to move on. I would have liked to stay longer, but as I can only be in the EU for 90 out of every 180 days, it was on to the next place. I wanted to see what the Netherlands was like outside of the more international and touristy capital, and experience modern Dutch life in The Hague. As the administrative center and seat of government for the Netherlands (which is different than the capital, I guess. I don’t really get it either), I was expecting a city dominated by large ornate, government buildings, akin to Canada or the UK’s parliamentary buildings. Which to my surprise, is not what I found.
The Hague felt very modern and urban compared to Amsterdam. Large skyscrapers dominated the skyline as the train pulled into Den Haag Centraal Station. After a brief struggle, figuring out where to catch the metro, a short ride brought me to Grote Market where I would find my next accomodations, The Pink Flamingo Hostel.
The Pink Flamingo sits tucked back off an alley on an otherwise busy plaza, filled with chairs and tables and surrounded by a collection of bars, cafes and street food vendors. At night it came alive, filled with chatter and laughter until the late hours, but for now it was relatively subdued.
As I only had a day and a half to get to know the Hague, I dropped my bags off and headed out to see it.
Unfavorable Impressions
My initial reaction to The Hague was not one of great enthusiasm. Likely for a number of factors, coming off the high of Amsterdam, the deck was stacked against this new city. The hostel’s location also left a lot to be desired. Although the plaza outside the window was charming, the square itself sat at the end of several busy shopping streets, basically an open-air mall. As is to be expected of many city centers, this attracted all sorts of people and offered a more apparent look at the social inequities that pervade city life than had been readily seen in Amsterdam. Finally, it was a travel day. And although the train ride had only been 40 minutes, I know that I always struggle a little more on the days when I don’t yet have my bearings. After all, my first day in Amsterdam had been no picnic either.
I had about 4 hours to kill until I could officially check in at The Pink Flamingo, so I set about wandering aimlessly in my usual way. At the end of the mall, I found The Hague’s central library and had a little poke around. Spread over five floors, the library was everything you expect a library to be. A clean, quiet retreat in the middle of the busy city. It was an excellent atmosphere to help gather myself a little before setting out again. One quirk of note, the books on the shelves throughout the library are incredibly uniform in size and style. I’m used to see a book shelf cluttered with rectangles of all sizes, but here it was like each book fit a mandated standard.
A bit more wandering brought me to Mauritshuis, an art museum with a collection of works by Rembrandt and Vermeer, including the famous Girl with a Pearl Earring. I wouldn’t have time to visit during my brief stay, but it was interesting that such a relatively demure building held some very celebrated works.
Just beyond, I found the Haagse Bos, a large wooded park that stretched for several blocks. Again, I couldn’t avoid a comparison to the parks that I had seen in Amsterdam. Though the park was lovely and quiet, it was missing the liveliness of the Vonderpark or Rembrandtpark.
Finally, the appointed check-in time approached and I headed back to the hostel. Ready to call it an early evening, as I was already exhausted from the day. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had a six bunk room all to myself for at least a few hours, while I recovered and tried to plan my next day. Eventually, I would be joined by a single roommate for the night, Katie, a fifth year med student from Wales enjoying a brief holiday before school started in the fall.
Turning It Around
Friday morning, after the best sleep that I’d had since I started traveling, I made my plan for the day. I wanted to rent a bike and bike out to the beach about 5km from the city center. I decided that the urban environment wasn’t to my taste, so I wanted to see what things were like further out.
Unfortunately, renting a bike didn’t work out. I’d hoped to use an app based rental service, Donkey Republic (like Lime or Bird), that provided cheap hourly rentals. However, things fell apart as I needed to confirm my phone number via a text message, which currently isn’t working for me (probably something related to the eSIM I’m using). Well, no trouble, I have feet (blistered though they are after the last week) and so I set out walking.
With a rough endpoint in mind, I chose a path that would take me through as much greenery as possible. The Hague shares it narrow streets and generous bike lanes with Amsterdam, but it lacks much of the plant-life on the street that makes its cousin so appealing. Instead, the most prominent feature of the streets are its brick buildings, emblematic of Dutch architecture. The land the Netherlands inhabits is an alluvial plain flowing out to the Atlantic, and sits upon an ancient seabed, so it lacks large deposits of stone, instead subsisting mostly of sand and clay. Thus, stone facades are relatively rare throughout Dutch cities and brick is the primary building material. To the point that many streets are paved using brick.
Along my walk, I began to encounter the government buildings that I had initially expected to populate The Hague. These were some of the first standalone houses that I had seen since I arrived in the Netherlands. These large manors contained foreign embassies, consulates, and ambassador’s residences. Wrapped in wrought iron fences and denoted by flags representing their home nations.
These officials buildings soon gave way to the Scheveningse Bosjes, another large wooded park. Here, I would spend an hour chasing tits through the forest underbrush (see Bird Corner for more). Today, the more subdued nature of Hague’s wooded park felt like a nice reprieve from the city. A chance to move away from the traffic along the boulevards and escape amongst the oak, maple and buckthorn trees, wrapped in ivy and singing with small birds.
Further on, I emerged from the woods into a pleasant seaside community featuring an impressive park, complete with a sports center, playground, small farmyard filled with resident animals, calisthenics park, a community garden, and skatepark. From here, it was only another 10 minutes to the sea.
I had the good fortune to come out on the less busy end of the beach. Just down the way, the beachfront was filled with resort hotels, restaurants, bars and beach clubs replete with lounge chairs and day beds. Making my way down to the water over a clean sand beach, I noted an oddity. Where most beaches I’d experienced would have a band of the seaweed above the water line when the high tide had pushed it up on land, this beach featured flowing rivers of shells. Thousands upon thousands of shells, running in bands and waves stretching over a kilometer of beach.
Also present, were a large number of jellyfish slowly be washed ashore. Portuguese Man of War (or so Google told me) carcasses littered the shore. Capable of giving painful stings, even in death, it required a bit of caution to walk along the shallows to make sure I wasn’t unintentionally walking into or stepping on any trailing tentacles.
The beach was crowded all along its extent. It was a beautiful day and it brought out families, tourists and locals alike, to stroll along or swim amongst the floating jellies. Sandcastles decorated the shoreline, some quite large and impressive. One feature a central pit large enough that the child within was only visible above his shoulders.
Finally, having soaked up my share of sun, I set out back to the hostel. It was an hour long walk, slightly faster than my outbound trip, due to a more straight-line route. This route had the advantage of bringing me past one more sight that I’d hoped to see while I was in The Hague, The International Court of Justice, housed in the Vredespaleis (Peace Palace). Here, finally, was the impressive building reminiscent of the parliamentary buildings that I had expected to find.
With that checked off my list, I returned to the hostel for another quiet evening in. Looking over my photos and chatting with Katie and our new roommate, Sam. Sam — based out of Prague, but originally from Hertfordshire — was heading out early in the morning for a camping trip with some Dutch friends in Austria. All in all, it was a much more pleasant hostel experience than what Amsterdam had offered. And I found that despite my initial impressions, I had begun to warm to The Hague, though I continued not be a fan of the city center.
Bird Corner
My time in the Bosjes of The Hague was delightful in terms of the new birds they offered. Different than the city birds that I had already seen in Amsterdam, these feathery friends were happier among the trees and leaves than the rooftops and plazas.
Here I found Great Tits, Long Tailed Tits (relatives of Canada’s Chickadees), Wood Pigeons, Great Crested Grebes, and, one of my personal favorites, the Great Cormorant.
I’m writing from Rotterdam now, waiting for my clothes to finish up in the dryer. I’ll be here for the next three days and then moving on to Antwerp or Brussels.
The anxiety hit me in Halifax. For weeks before I left, people had asked if I was nervous and my answer was always, “not yet”. I was sure that the nerves would come, but I wasn’t sure when. Turns out all it took was a few hours on planes, and a short wait for the final one before I left the country.
The week leading up to my trip was focused on spending time with my closest friends and family. It was an emotionally affecting week, leaving me feeling very loved and appreciated. To a person, my loved ones were excited for me, though sad to see me gone for an unknown amount of time.
Now, sitting at an airport bar, drinking a beer and eating a burrito, I began to feel the loss of those treasured connections. Well, maybe not loss, but the reality of the distance over which they would now span. I hadn’t even left the country and it already felt so far.
Nonetheless, my mind was set. I had done so much work to get to this point, I needed to take the final step. So, I boarded the plane to Amsterdam.
Arriving in Amsterdam
I arrived in Amsterdam, exhausted. My flight had departed Halifax at 11:45pm ADT, and arrived in the Netherlands at 10:30am CET. Just a short five and a half hour flight. I managed a couple of hours sleep, but not much more.
The weather in Amsterdam was as dreary as I felt, doing nothing to help my spirits as I boarded the bus that would take me to my hostel. The ride from the airport into the center of city helped somewhat, piquing my curiosity as I got a taste of what would await me over the next week. Bikes and bike lanes, narrow European streets, endless row houses, greenery, signs in languages I didn’t understand, and Amsterdammers going about their lives.
I stepped off the bus just in front of the main entrance to the Vondelpark, Amsterdam’s largest park, into which my hostel enjoyed direct access. The StayOkay Vondelpark hostel is a large complex of several buildings connected by covered walkways. One of which, dates to the 1890s and previously housed the Amsterdam Household School, dedicated to improving education and employment opportunities for women. It was on the top floor of this building that I would find my first room (yes, first, more on that later).
Luckily, my room was ready for me, as it was only about noon. I dropped off my bags and set out to do a little exploring. Though truthfully, what I really wanted to do was pass out on my bunk. So rather than let the jet lag win, I picked a random direction set out. As I meandered through the streets, I couldn’t help but feel a little put out. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but somehow this wasn’t how I thought I would feel. I was tired, sad, and unimpressed with all of the newness that surrounded me. Eventually, I found a bench along a quiet canal and pulled out my journal for some quiet reflection. The conclusion I arrived at, I needed a nap.
After my nap (which I kept to a respectable two hours), it was time to find some food. This is the first problem that I would need to tackle. Before leaving, I had set the goal for myself not to spend more money on food than I did at home. I set this bar at a fairly generous $30CAD per day, which typically included $150 of groceries, with the remainder being spent at restaurants and bars. I knew this would be a challenge, considering the exchange rate for CAD to EUR was sitting at about $1.60 to €1. So, the plan was to buy groceries and cook for myself, as much as possible.
This would prove to be a problem here, as the hostel did not offer kitchen facilities, opting instead to serve their own expensive-ish food. Despite the convenience, I wouldn’t be dissuaded from my plan and I set out to find a nearby grocery store, Albert Heijn. It was here that I encountered my first roadblock, I don’t speak Dutch.
English is so ubiquitous in Amsterdam, on ads, signs, spoken, that I hadn’t considered that that wouldn’t carry into the markets. But, with some reasoning, I was able to work out that ‘kip’ was chicken and ‘Italiaanse roerbak’ was a basic prepared Italian salad mix. Pleased with my cleverness, I took my bagged salad and pre-cooked chicken back to the hostel to mix together in one of the collapsible tupperwares that I’d brought.
It only took a couple of bites to learn that ‘roerbak’ was not salad, like I’d thought. Instead, it was something more like stir fry. My ‘salad’ was made up of mushroom, green onions, raw red onions, and herbs meant for the frying pan. Nonetheless, I soldiered on, mouth burning from the onions, determined not to let my $10 go to waste.
From that first mistake, things got better. I found a good breakfast routine at the convenience store down the road, fresh fruit, yogurt, maybe a pastry, and a small coffee. I’ve also learned that not all Albert Heijns are the same. There’s one about every 5 or 6 blocks and their offerings for prepared food can vary wildly. But, the upshot is that I’ve been able to enjoy a number of different salads that are legitimately tasty and healthy, quinoa, Italian, couscous, poke bowls. I’m spoiled for choice.
At this point, a week in, I’m only about $9 above my food budget and I’m not going hungry or yearning for more. Which I’m taking as a win. Though, I also haven’t had a pannenkoeken or stroopwafel yet, so maybe not a huge win.
(Also, a quick shout-out to my spork, it’s been the MVP of this trip so far.)
Exploring Amsterdam, Loving Amsterdam
Though my first take was initially pretty cold towards Amsterdam, it didn’t take long for my heart to melt. With each day I spend here, my appreciation for the city only grows. It’s a fascinating place. Immensely practical, form follows function here, but aesthetics are not forgotten along the way. The streets are well laid out to prioritize bicycle and pedestrian traffic over cars and motor vehicles. In my week here, I haven’t needed to bother with public transit, choosing to explore on foot and bike instead.
The city is dense, with three and four story row houses dominating basically every street. And yet, the atmosphere doesn’t become oppressive as a concrete jungle of narrow alleys like some other places I’ve been (looking at you Dublin). Even the alleys are charming, filled with plant life and gardens, and heaps of bicycles lining the lane ways. The ground floors of most buildings along roads are populated with every type of business that you can think of, generating the foot traffic that makes even neighborhoods far from the bustling touristy center feel lively. And don’t even get me started on the patios and street seating outside the restaurants and bars, especially along the canals. It’s a dream.
A quiet dream. Without all of the vehicles that clutter other cities, you can hear the people speaking around you. And they are speaking in every language. I’ve found that you’re as likely to hear French, Spanish, German, English, Italian, as Dutch in Amsterdam. I’m taken to understand that it is a city of transplants, filled with those who came and fell in love with its charms. And I get it.
Over my days, I’ve explored parks and streets and canals, turning left or right as the whim takes me. I’ve done yoga in the park. I’ve visited the Rijksmuseum. Walked for an hour to attend a free storytelling event hosted by Mezrab, where I made friends with a nice French woman, Chloe, with aspirations in aquaculture and sustainable fishing. And despite the rough start, it’s been a delight. I’m a little sad to be leaving soon, when it feels like I’ve only scratched the surface of this amazing city. But, it’s a big world and there’s a lot to see.
Hostel Woes
I knew coming in that living in hostels would be an adjustment to my normal living situation. I’ve lived alone for the majority of my adult life and I’m used to being in control of my environment. So, in preparation for this change in circumstance, I have counseled myself on the need for adaptability. Be like water, fit your container, go with the flow.
As it turns out, there should be a limit to how adaptable I’m willing to be. My bunk-mate and I got off on the wrong foot right away. After exchanging greetings, he asked if I was American, “No, Canadian. You’re Scottish?”, “No, English.” (Northern English, in my defense. And Western Canadian and American accents are basically indistinguishable, in his.). That was all we had to say to each other for the night.
The first night was relatively uneventful, but for the fact that my bunk-mate rose fairly early in the morning, maybe 5am or so. Not a problem in and of itself, but his footlocker was stowed beneath my bed, so he was directly next to me while he was rooting around in it for the next ten minutes. Also, he can’t see well, so he turns on the room light. Again, not a big problem, I’m adaptable.
The next night, things got stranger. As the room is quieting down for sleep, my bunk-mate is sitting on his bed watching his iPad, alternating between giggling and groaning, loud enough that I can hear it through my noise-cancelling headphones. And as he’s sitting cross-legged, every time he shifts, it rocks the entire bunk-bed. He goes on like this from midnight until about 2am when he settles down. Until roughly 4am, when he’s up again and rooting through his footlocker with the light on. Eventually, he’s done and leaves the room, to the collective relief of myself and the 3 other boarders sharing it.
Unfortunately, he returns an hour later and repeats the process before leaving again. And repeats, once an hour, until 8am. But it’s ok, everyone in this room is adaptable.
Here, the plot thickens (warning for those readers who may be squeamish about vomit). After a day and evening out exploring, I returned to find that the room’s shared bathroom, now featured a toilet with a thick coating of vomit across the seat and stuck to the bowl. Immediately, my mind jumps to blaming my bunk-mate, as he’s the only one currently in the room. However, I check myself. I have no reason to think that it was him, other than that he had been the one to most recently annoy me. So instead, I head down to reception and ask for someone to come clean it, which they do without complaint. When the cleaners arrive, my bunkmate swears that he had no idea about the vomit (though somewhat suspiciously, when he goes to check it out, he says that he can’t see it, despite it’s bright yellow hue).
That night, at about 2am, the sounds of vomiting from the bathroom wake me. Aha! So, soon I’ll know who the culprit is. My surprise cannot be overstated when it’s not my bunk-mate that emerges, but the resident of the bottom-bunk across the way from me.
The night passes, and we have another early morning wake up call. Though, thankfully without repeat appearances. After sleeping in a bit late, I got on with my day of exploration. Again, upon returning later in the day, I found vomit coating the toilet, and no one in the room but my bunk-mate. Deciding to deal with it after a taking a shower (which was in a separate room from the toilet), it turned out that I didn’t need to, as reception had already been informed and sent a cleaner.
I went to do laundry and returned to find yet another patina of puke gracing the toilet. Now, my bunk-mate and the bottom bunk puker from the previous night were in the room at some point in the intervening period, so it still wasn’t clear who the culprit was.
It was after the fourth night that things would finally come to a head. The bottom bunk had another late night kneeling session in the water closet. And my bunk-mate performed his early morning routine with lights on full blast. It turns out, this was the bottom bunk’s breaking point, and he went to reception to complain. Reception sent a representative to offer a mild chiding and issue a warning to my bunk-mate, who was, fairly, chastened and left for the remainder of the morning.
As chance would have it, I was about to head out for my afternoon activity when I overheard the bottom bunk, back at reception complaining. From what I heard, he was transferring rooms. This sounded like a pretty good idea to me, so I jumped on the same train. The desk attendant was very apologetic when I relayed similar concerns as the bottom bunk, though was surprised to hear about bottom bunk’s own nocturnal goings-on. It was from her that I learned that it was bottom bunk that had reported the vomit that had been cleaned up while I was in the shower. And again, my bunk-mate had plead ignorance.
At any rate, I was offered a bunk in another room, and a complimentary breakfast for my troubles. And thus I learned, adaptability must have its limits.
As a post script, coincidence again found me walking out of the hostel at a fortuitous moment. I was directly behind my ex-bunk-mate as he trudged down the lane with bag in tow, alleviating my guilt that I had abandoned some other poor souls to sleepless early mornings and unhygienic toilets.
Bird Corner
I’ve been going on forever now, so one last thing to wrap things up. A collection of the birds that I saw in my wanderings around Amsterdam.
I’m leaving Amsterdam tomorrow, bound for the Hague for a couple days before moving on to Rotterdam. After a few shaky first steps, I feel like I’ve got my legs a little more under me and I’m excited to see what comes next.
And now, I leave you with the legally mandated photo of a windmill required of all visitors to Holland.
