More thoughts on the Netherlands

Engineering, an iffy work ethic, and bubbles are good actually

(My prior two pieces from this trip are here: On walking Netherlands and walking Belgium)

I had high hopes for Rotterdam, where I ended my walk from Amsterdam. It’s Europe’s largest port, and my favorite cities are port cities, with their mix of historical openness, real world pragmatism, and chaotic energy.

As a contrarian, Rotterdam¹ was also appealing since I’d been told it was an ugly new city, without much for tourist, thanks to having been bombed into nothingness during WW2.

After a week and eighty miles of the stifling quaintness that sounded like a nice change, and it was, for about two hours, but I’d arrived on a Friday afternoon, and if there is any single travel lesson I can offer, it’s to stay away from big European towns on weekends. Especially downtowns, which empty of workers and fill with pleasure seekers, the worst being large UK groups. Hen and stag parties who view the continent as one big clubbing smorgasbord to gorge from in the evening, then vomit back up the next morning.

I wasn’t entirely unprepared. After realizing my mistake, I retreated to my prior strategy of hanging in the neighborhoods outside of downtown, where the locals drank and ate, but in Rotterdam, like the rest of Netherlands, there wasn’t much open except in the center, beyond a few Muslim places, and Ramadan made those either entirely empty, or entirely full.