Rotterdam

Building Bridges.....

Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus may not have exactly coined the phrase, In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king....  But he certainly gave it currency, a currency (the Euro perhaps?) which is just as relevant today as during his fifteenth century lifetime.....

And I am in Rotterdam, Erasmus's native city, though he wouldn't recognise it since it was almost completely flattened on May 14th  1940 by order of an irate Adolf Hitler who had assumed he could conquer The Netherlands in just one day.

The name, Rotterdam, comes from around 1270, when locals dammed the Rotta, a local stream, whose name means Muddy Waters, which has nothing to do with this Mannish Boy who resides in the  Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (currently in a state of major restoration, with a new building going up next door which is not unlike the marvellous Tower of Babel by  Pieter Breughel the Elder which is also here....)...

Oh, yeah 

Oh, yeah 

Everything gonna be alright this mornin'

The city now lies precariously below sea level around extensive docks on the Nieuwe Maas channel, which joins the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta and the North Sea.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, for this is Holland, a part of The Netherlands - the Low Countries - but this evening I dine at De Pijp, (The Pipe), the oldest restaurant in the city, and, it's five metres below sea level.....

There is precious little else of any age here.  The occasional trace of art nouveau glass in a door, a plane tree held up with steel supports, the Witte Huis (1898),

and the Hotel New York (built in 1901 as offices for the Holland American Line, flagship below)....

Most everything else either rose from the ashes of the 1940 firestorm or is from the current millennium, like the extraordinary Markthal (market hall), opened in 2014, created by Arno Coenen and Iris Roskam as the largest artwork in the world: the Horn of Plenty, the cornucopia, with a surface of 11,000 square metres.....

Another daring building is The Red Apple, designed by Kees Christiaanse for the island of Wijnhaven and completed in 2009:

I cannot imagine what Erasmus would make of it all.  Arriving from Basle, his ghost would step off the Thalys at Rotterdam Centraal,

Then, walking out amidst the trams and bicycles, he would stare up at the shining skyscrapers tilting towards heaven,

Then, strolling down by the Westersingel, he would catch the reflections of the wonky blocks opposite, 

Or see the painted face that smiles from the apartments above,

I am enthralled by the exciting variety of modern structures that overwhelm me (I have become the ghost of Erasmus, wandering, totally, how can I say? gobsmacked? by this city....) even though, occasionally, I need to lean against the bar of an Edward Hopper Diner to rest my weary, humanist head.....

Then there's the bridges.  I walk across the span of the Willemsbrug (1981) a mere 318 metres long, 33 metres wide and 65 metres high, 

Which contrasts in many ways with the 800 metre long Erasmusbrug, De Zwaan (The Swan), completed in 1996.  This has an asymmetrical 139 metre high pylon and forty graceful stays.  It sweeps across the New Meuse and is a marvel of grace and poise....

And it may be a platitude to say that building bridges is soooo much better than constructing walls.  

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down....

But the difference between Erasmus and the 'great' men of our time is that the former didn't have his head in a bag, metaphorical or not.....

He wore a sensible, head-warming hat to protect his fizzing brain.....

This was a man who studied, travelled, explored, wrote, taught.  He studied at Paris, Leuven and Turin; was a friend of Thomas More and John Colet, lectured at Oxford and Cambridge; influenced Tyndale and the translators of the King James Bible; and left a legacy that survives today almost five hundred years after his death.  Which legacy is not only in the beautiful bridge in Rotterdam, and in the city's university, but also in the Erasmus Programme, which assists undergraduates who wish to study abroad (his name is used as an acronym for the European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students), and Erasmus+, the EU's programme to support education, training, youth and sport....

So, building bridges, supporting people's mobility and integration, whoever they are....

I am not the only tourist in Rotterdam, but the city is not inundated. I hear Spanish spoken over a beer on a boat,

And find myself sitting next to a Scotsman in a bar, sharing his bottle of Spey-side whisky with a friend, but he has lived here for thirty years.....  

It is a busy place, teeming with workers and students whizzing past on bicycles or flooding through the stations....

I meet Kika, five months old, nothing but friendly...

And enjoy the relaxed, unself-conscious air of the streets,

Where even the wildlife is colourful and friendly....

I cannot claim to have studied Erasmus, but read that he did more than anyone else to advance the revival of learning and protested in the interests of the people against the thoughtless tyranny of their rulers....

I understand him to have said, That you are patriotic will be praised by many and easily forgiven by everyone; but in my opinion it is wiser to treat men and things as though we held this world the common fatherland (patria) of all....'

And if that isn't a sensible appeal to build bridges rather than walls, I'm a dutchman.....

So I repair to the Grand Cafe Wester Paviljoen, on the corner of the Nieuwe Binnenweg and the Matthenesserlaan, and take a ghostly beer....

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other....

Desiderius Erasmus

Oh Yeah!

Amsterdam 2018

We all need to escape.....

Angry Young Man John Osborne never stayed in the Grand Hotel Amrâth Amsterdam as, at the time of his death in 1994, it was the headquarters of the city's public transport company (GVB). It had been created just before the First World War as the Scheepvaarthuis (Dutch for House of Shipping), the joint head office for six shipping companies. Architect Jo Van der Mey combined Art Nouveau with contemporary Dutch and nautical ideas to form the key work of the Amsterdam School.

In The Hotel in Amsterdam, six friends from London, whose lives and work are overshadowed by K.L., a demanding film producer, flee the country for a weekend to escape his influence. In a hotel in Amsterdam, the uneasy equilibrium that has existed between them begins to unravel as the alcohol starts to flow. John Osborne's account of these relationships won the Evening Standard Best Play of the Year Award in 1968. 

The play was revived at the Donmar Warehouse starring Tom Hollander (a happily coincidental name) in September 2003, but is rarely performed these days, though it is not without current relevance.   They are escaping the clutches of K.L, who is described as, the biggest, most poisonous, voracious, Machiavellian dinosaur in the movies.... And we all know what that means......  Indeed, I think we do, Mr Weinstein?

In the Grand Hotel Amrâth we are not escaping anyone.  We have come to see old friends, as well as Rembrandt, Van Gogh et al.  We have come to revive ourselves with the delights of foreign travel, while we still can.  The hotel itself is an extraordinary building and we marvel at the way architect Ray Kentie and his team of artists renovated the office building.  It took a year and a half of demolition and clearance, starting in 2003, and then a further two and half to complete the restoration.

With a glance over my shoulder at Osborne, however, we feel just a little oppressed by the city, and by the hotel.  It is shadowy, and the heavy woods and thick wallpapers dull our spirits.  The irony is that, as tourists, we are ever trying to escape ourselves.  Amanda and I first visited the Rembrandthuis over twenty years ago, and were welcomed in through the front door into a relatively quiet, dark seventeenth century town house.  It seemed as if the owner had just stepped out for a stroll, and we made ourselves at home in anticipation of his return.  Now you enter through a glass, steel and concrete atrium, and jostle with hundreds of others, all intently glued to audio guides.  There were 265,000 such visitors last year and I am told that they anticipate 300,000 this year.

The Van Gogh museum only takes online bookings. There are queues for the Rijksmuseum.  The Red Light district is now swamped by tour groups. There's hardly a sailor in sight. No chance of privacy.....

What can we do?  We are tourists too.

We escape. Again.  To Haarlem.  Seventeen minutes on a train from Amsterdam Centraal, and a totally different atmosphere.  The Grote Kerk, dedicated to St Bavo, is an oasis of peace, despite the monumental organ once deftly played by the ten-year-old Mozart. 

We pay our respects to Frans Hals, though the Laughing Cavalier is resting in the Groot Heiligland, the Alms House for old men where he ended his days, in anticipation of celebrations later in the day.....

A fact endorsed by excited locals, who seem to be bursting pink and turquoise balloons in our honour....

The pedestrian streets are quiet, their quaint, wonky houses immaculate (apart from the occasional reference to South Park).....

And the windmill waves at us across the Grebe-infested river.

Back in Amsterdam we have a beer at Café Papeneiland, a bruine kroeg from 1642,

then find an old fashioned restaurant in Jordaan and eat stamppot andijvie met lamsbout, which is mighty fine. After this we have a de Koninck and oude genever at the Café Karpershoek before retiring to the Amrâth, feeling full, and a little wobbly, and not quite so jaded.

We look back.  But not in anger.  I met John Osborne in Rome once, not that long before he died.  The man who changed British theatre was no longer an angry young man.  He was more an avuncular old boy with the husky Fulham tones of the late John Hurt playing Jeffrey Barnard.  I asked him whether he ever regretted writing Look Back in Anger?  He smiled, perhaps at my naivety.  It pays the rent, he said,with a chuckle. 

I didn't ask him about The Hotel in Amsterdam.....

In actual fact, I look back, whenever I look back, with great affection, whether to Amsterdam or not......  Perhaps looking forward is not so easy nowadays?