There is nowhere I’d rather be today than Rotterdam. The same goes for tomorrow, the day after that, the week after that and … well, you get the drift. Although all my Dutch family is long dead – my only uncle never had children and my mum only had me, so I’m the end of the line and I’m in England – Rotterdam draws me back. As a child, and then a young teenager, my mum and I went pretty well every summer, usually for the entire school holiday period. How could I not be aware of my roots?
I went back again last September, the pull feeling utterly irresistible, hoping that perhaps a further visit, alone this time, would give me some kind of closure, permanently scratch that itch, but the opposite happened. I am now drawn back, perhaps more than I have ever been.
The internet is partly responsible. It’s all there on YouTube. When in Rotterdam on a Tuesday and Saturday, you go to the Binnenrotte Market, by Station Blaak. I wrote about it last year. Sure there are some differences to the area – the railway that crashed and banged above the market now runs silently below it. And the magnificent Markthal (Market Hall) stands nearby. But it still feels exactly the same. The sounds and the smell, at least to my ears, are just the same. My brain, or what’s left of it, must pick up on the atmosphere and take me back. Sometimes I feel I can almost touch yesterday.
I’m not going to insult your intelligence by suggesting there’s some kind of spiritual connection going on. Of course there isn’t. To suggest there was would be to imply that actually religious superstition might too be real. None of it is. We’re talking about memories, that’s all.
There are no ghosts, either, but the sense of being at least partly Rotterdamer is very real. It feels like home in the same way as being at my real home. When I walk to and through the market, the latter at snail’s pace as I take it all in, it’s a blast from the past.
If my memories are strong, as if nothing has changed, then I only have to look around to see the city has and, given its near total destruction at the hands of the Luftwaffe, it will inevitably be change for the better. Rotterdam is completely different to its bustling and overcrowded big sister, Amsterdam, and infinitely better for it.
With all that’s happening in the world, all that death and destruction, with much of the former happening far too close to home, I know now that I need to go back again. I need to watch the trams – and trains – go by, I need to devour the patat, soaked in mayonnaise, I need to walk around the places I used to go, to smell the roasting peanuts because it’s a part of me and I love it.
If you like to travel, then you should go too. Go to Rotterdam as well as Amsterdam, better still, go there instead. You might not feel what I feel but I reckon you will love it.
