Although I was born and raised in Bristol, I am only a quarter English, although when asked I refer to myself unhesitatingly as English or British. I know next to nothing about my Norwegian heritage and have no desire to learn anything about it, unless someone puts it on a plate for me, but my Dutch blood still courses through my veins, as it always has done. My mum took me to the Netherlands, specifically Rotterdam, almost every year during my childhood and even though she’s long dead, along with all my other Dutch relatives, I still feel a pull, a need to go back, if only for a few days. I am in the early stages of planning a trip for 2023 but this time on my own.
As a child, mum would take me to Rotterdam for the whole school summer holidays. There were a few occasions when I returned with Dutch as my first language, which apparently caused me a few difficulties at Primary School. Although I was fluent in Dutch, somewhat bizarrely my mum made no effort to teach me to read the language. I would spend each and every day conversing with my Dutch family in their language but if someone put a Dutch book or newspaper in front of me, it was effectively gobbledegook. It’s something I deeply regret, particularly as my understanding of the Dutch language gradually deteriorates with each passing year.
When we went to Rotterdam, we didn’t do very much. My grandmother, who spoke no english at all, was as poor as we were, if not more so. She lived in an apartment on Leopoldstraat, at the back of which was a small grass area which became my field of dreams, as I played football with the local boys. But going out was a rarity.
In the 1960s and 1970s there were no economy flights from anywhere to anywhere else, least of all from Bristol. Flying was solely for the upper orders, not working class riff-raff. Instead, mum took me by train, from Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington, by taxi from Paddington to Liverpool Street and then the so-called boat train to Harwich/Parkeston Quay from where we took an overnight ferry. Bleary eyed at around 7.00am, we would look through our cabin portal to see the approaching shoreline of the Hook of Holland. Safely ashore, there would be a waiting train to Rotterdam Centraal and then a tram for the last part of the journey. A diet of Pea Soup and various other stodge dishes was the plan for the next six weeks.
By day if I wasn’t playing football, I’d be standing on the corner watching the trams go by. I could literally watch them for hours and often did. On Tuesdays and Saturdays, mum took me to the huge market near Station Blaak. In those days, the railway towered over the market on huge metal stilts, it seemed to me. The noise as a train approached and then passed was glorious. I took in most of the market but it was the railway I loved most. Today, the railway runs underground, but the magnificent market is still there, along with the state of the art Markthal. Walking through the market remains a huge thrill for me and like everything else in Rotterdam, it feels like home, that I am supposed to be there.
I saw my first professional football matches in Rotterdam when my Uncle took me to see Feyenoord play. We went up the Euromast tower. We went shopping (of the window variety) in the Lijnbaan Shopping Centre. If I was very lucky, I might get a cone of patat (chips), drowned in mayonnaise or a brief visit to a bookshop where I was horrified to find all the books were in Dutch. Rotterdam was the only place I felt I could have happily moved to if we left Bristol, which I know was a kind of half-arsed plan back in the day.
My return visits are sporadic but always special. More than anything, it’s the feel of the place, the smells and noises, I love so much. And an instant feeling of being back where I belong, or maybe where I once belonged? I still love doing exactly the same things as I always did. I would love to spend hours watching the trams and trains go by, wandering through the market; allowing the sweet scent of nostalgia to wash over me. Nothing tear-jerking because what’s gone has gone and the dead aren’t going to come back. I just love to be there.
Next year, I plan to take the trains to Harwich, the overnight boat to the Hook of Holland, another train to Rotterdam and then I’m going to stay in the city for a while. It will be a writing experience too, as I attempt to complete my non-awaited memoir thanks to the many millions of pounds I have earned courtesy of generous people buying me a coffee and my worst-selling book (is this right? – ed). I shall walk the market, watch the trams go by and visit the places that meant so much and still do mean so much. I will probably fly back to Bristol rather than do the ferry twice, not least because the train-train-ferry-train option is hellishly expensive.
Watch out Rotterdam: I’m coming home. Not that any of you will have the slightest idea of who I am.
