Almost every summer of my childhood was spent in Rotterdam. My mum scrimped and saved all year and, with a generous financial top-up from her mother, my Oma (grandmother), as soon as school broke up, we were on the trains from Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington, London Liverpool Street to Harwich, the nightboat to Hoek Van Holland and finally the train from Hoek Van Holland to Rotterdam Centraal. A short tram ride and we would arrive at Oma’s apartment on Leopoldstraat, our home for the next six weeks. Nothing much happened in those six weeks but that was how I liked it.
My main daytime activity was to head out to the main road, Goudesingel, and watch the trams go by. Come rain or shine, I didn’t care what the weather was like. All I needed was trams. But on Tuesdays and Saturdays, it was market day in Rotterdam and that was always a must go for me.
Rattling up above the market was the main railway line out to the east. Some trains would stop at Station Blaak, the electric expresses would thunder through. Wherever I was, I stopped and took it all in. There were only a few things better than trams in Rotterdam: the smell of roasting peanuts, ice cream with fresh cream on top, salty liquorice and the elevated railway.
We had no money, but we were happy. I know that’s a cliché rolled out by people of a certain (old) age, but it’s true. The shopping would consist of some lettuce, an onion, maybe some eggs if we didn’t already have some and the ingredients for traditional pea soup. No wonder we were so thin. Perhaps a 15 minute shop at best but somehow I’d manage to extend the time by begging my mother. “Just one more train, please, mum” over and over again.
Unlike, say Amsterdam, Rotterdam is incredibly modern. The Luftwaffe saw to that and the rebuilding carries on at breakneck speed some 80 years on. Indeed, when I go back, I barely recognise some places in the city and it’s down to my internal navigation system, which is even on a good way desperately flawed, to get anywhere at all. With all the progress comes a cost. Tired of having the railway leaving the city over a bridge that occasionally needed raising to enable large ships to pass by, it was decided to build a long tunnel under the market and under the river. One year I went back and the overhead railway was gone. In a somewhat sad and pathetic way so was part of my life.
The market remains, almost entirely unchanged, or maybe even bigger. Near the now underground Station Blaak stands the Markthal (Market Hall), a spectacular outlet with something like 100 different places to try. All around the building are apartments. It’s a modern miracle and so very Dutch, brilliantly utilising space for something so wonderful. Across the way are the famous cube houses, which never fail to amaze me. Remind me one day to go inside them. Trips are available.
There are fast food outlets seemingly everywhere. I always stick to patat (chips) with fritesaus (chip sauce, like Mayo but sweeter and ‘only’ about 25% fat), served in a cone with all the saus on top. Very messy but essential. More sophisticated types can enjoy, if that’s the word, pickled raw herring, which one consumes rather as one would consume oyster. Numerous Vietnamese stalls and other effnic foods are available and all are better than the herring, trust me. My one experience as a child put me off sea food for life.
I was there in the autumn of 2023 on a solo visit, covering the tracks, especially the tram and rail tracks of my younger years. I went to the apartment we used to stay in (without going in), I toured the old market and smelled the repulsive smell of pickled raw herring, much beloved of my late mother, it has to be said. The feel of the place remains the same, even though Rotterdam as become an incredibly diverse and multi-ethnic place. I am hoping that the sense of tolerance and respect Rotterdam folk have always had for each other has sustained. It certainly felt like it.
There were no ghosts as I visited the market because they don’t exist. But the memories felt like ghosts and if I closed my eyes and dreamed, I was the short-trousered boy, desperately clinging to my mother’s metaphorical apron strings in order to avoid getting lost,. what with all the tears and bombast that may have caused.
I wish the railway still ran on its metal arches but the Dutch wait for no one and rarely allow nostalgia to stand in the way of genuine progress. Modern architecture didn’t blight the modern skyline, as it has done in so many places, because the old architecture turned to rubble in the blitz so the change is pretty well all good.
If I could be anywhere today, it would be in the sunshine at the Rotterdam market. And soon enough, don’t know when, I will be again.
(The photo at the head of the blog is a screenshot from today.)
