Rotterdam is the town where I spent most of my adolescent life and where I went to Law School at the Erasmus University (at the time still named Nederlandsche Economische Hoogeschool).
The city has gone through a remarkable transformation in the many years that I have been absent. It has grown into a world class living and working community with some great old and new architecture and splendid public transportation between train, tram, metro and buses. Trams move, incredibly quiet, to all parts of the city. Living in town there is no need to drive a car, in fact the city makes it very hard and expensive to drive a car, because free parking is non-existent and paid parking is hard to find and expensive (up to 40 Euro for a day). I roamed the scenes of Rotterdam on a day-pass that allowed me to jump around from the tram to the Metro at a cost of no more than 7.50 Euro for the whole day. The other alternative for cars, obviously, is the bike, the traditional mode of transportation for the Dutch.
Rotterdam is what it is, I hate to say, because of the Germans who flattened the inner city in a day long bombing raid in May 14 of 1940 aimed at breaking the Dutch military resistance against the German invasion in World War II (Holland had managed to remain neutral during World War I).
The German tactics worked. The Netherlands surrendered the next day, May 15, 1940.
Only a very few buildings were left standing in that bombardment. These are now highly visible landmarks in a completely redrawn cityscape. They include the St. Laurens Church, City Hall and 'the White House', long, at ten floors, the tallest building in the Europe, built in art nouveau style in 1898. The project of refilling the space that the Germans flattened is finally coming to an end. It has been filled to capacity with sometimes eye-catching architecture.
Situated at the mouth of the river Rhine, only about 35 km inland from the North sea, Rotterdam has long been the most important maritime port in Europe. Along the river Rhine and with a connection to the Danube, container traffic can reach many inland destinations in Western and Eastern Europe. Because of its location, Rotterdam has become a dynamo for economic development of the Netherlands. What strikes me, as I walk around my old stomping ground, is how well Rotterdam is taking advantage of its abundant waterfront. The commercial port has moved out of the city to the Maasvlakte, a large stretch of virgin land that the Dutch have reclaimed from the North sea. Thus, the port for the large ships has moved closer to the coastline and away from the city of Rotterdam, but still within its jurisdiction. The space, including many mooring slips, that has been vacated in this effort has been put to magnificent use for recreational and housing developments. The waterfront is publicly accessible almost everywhere you go and has become an important tourist attraction. The old passenger terminal for the Holland-America Line (pictured above) has been converted into a luxury hotel and the retired ss.Rotterdam has been permanently moored in the Maashaven. The near-by red-light district of Katendrecht has, for lack of business from the now absent sailors, been converted into an entertainment area with cafes, restaurants and terraces. If I have any criticism of the rebuilt of Rotterdam, it would be that there is awful little green space amid the architectural marvels of old and new.
Rotterdam today has a mayor of Moroccan descent, Ahmed Aboutaleb, a Muslim who has made himself well known and popular with the Dutch for his no-nonsense approach towards Muslim integration into the fabric of life in the Netherlands. He follows a series of energetic and ambitious city chiefs that have managed to make Rotterdam not only into an economic logistics powerhouse but also a very livable environment. It is home to Feijenoord, one of the top soccer clubs in the Netherlands, and to the Erasmus University, which features a world class medical center, a renown Economics Faculty and a business oriented Law School. In terms of livability, Rotterdam can compete with any US city.
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