Monday, January 26, 2004
Rotterdam: Come for the name, stay for the pancakes
For a 6-euro-and-60-cent rail ticket, one can travel roundtrip a few kilometers south to Rotterdam. The first thing one hears of Rotterdam is that large swaths of the city were destroyed by German and Allied bombing in World War II. The new architecture is robust and aggressively (sometimes garishly) modern, including the famous "cube houses", or cube-shaped apartments set on their corners. What's not as often mentioned about Rotterdam is that much of the old city remains.
I hitched a ride down to Rotterdam on Saturday with Remco, a rental agent, and my friend Peter (from Mr. Flick's). Peter rented an apartment with Remco's help, and we rode with him when he went back home to Rotterdam. After a lunch of meatball broodjes (small, open-faced sandwiches eaten with a fork), Peter and I took a Fast Ferry to Dordrecht, a small town just up the Maas River. Three-euros-point-sixty (one way) for a fast, comfortable and high-speed 45-minute journey to a charming and ancient little town. We stopped in the pub (where, over a pint, Peter recounted the time he shot a police officer who was coming through the window of his mining-engineer's quarters in the Congo in the 1960s), then walked to the station and returned to The Hague just in time for another party at the apartment of another intern, on Van Aerssenstraat (Statenkwartier).
[Aside: The intern Sarah from America had a loud, wine-soaked gathering on Friday night, on Zoutkeetsingel. I had a long discussion about Iraq (what else?) with an intern from the Danish embassy. I found myself defending the war to him, just to introduce a contrary viewpoint. Parties here are like parties in Seattle, where the only differences of opinion are about who is more lefty. Nonetheless, these parties are absolutely fascinating. Meeting and getting to know (that is, networking with) this international mix of people is one of the blessings of this internship, but I would happily forego this for even one evening at home with Sheryl, Dar and Sof right now.]
[Aside bis (II): Avoiding alcohol here is rather difficult for me when a glass of bier costs the same as a glass of Sprite, but drinking to excess has been easy to avoid. Maintaining control is more important than the amusing fuzziness of intoxication. I simply can't bother myself to be blitzed in a foreign country.]
On Sunday, I went back to Rotterdam with a group of interns (Emily and Cheryl from America, Peter and Rachel from Canada, Pau from Espana, Lillian, Sonja and Jasmine from Australia, Francesco from Italy, Julian from the U.K. and others) to a film screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Ana y los otros is a slow-moving and contemplative, low-budget directorial debut from an Argentinian, shot on location in her hometown. It's about Ana, an unmarried and independent 30-something, searching for her old flame, Mariano. It would not have been my choice; I got swept up in the moment and gave it a four-of-five, but it's at-best a rental back home.
More significantly, I discovered that Ashes of Time by Wong Kar Wei is also being screened at the Festival, as is Lost in Translation.
Then I found it, the gem of the festival, relegated to late weekend screenings: The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo's Cannes stinker, subject of a vitriolic feud between Roger Ebert and the director, the film for which the director apologized to the hostile audience at Cannes for making such a "self-indulgent" film, the film that Roger Ebert continues to call "the worst film ever", a film that has no chance of being released in the States. It's showing Friday at 11 p.m. I must see it, even though this will require emerging from Hollands-Spoor station into the most dangerous neighborhood in The Hague in the wee hours of a Saturday morning, the trams having stopped running hours earlier. It will mean fixing up the bike my friend and co-worker Anees has lent to me (thankfully, an American mountain bike rather than a heavy and expensive steel Dutch bike). I hope the director will be present to flame the audience, but I don't hold out much hope for this.
Before Sunday's film, we ate poofretjes or silver-dollar sized pancakes cooked three-score at a time in a pock-marked, outdoor griddle. Toppings like Grand Marnier, whipped cream or strawberries are extra, but the "plain" version comes covered, nee smothered, in powdered sugar and topped with a liberal chunk of butter carved from the astonishing 10-lbs. block of the stuff sitting on the counter nearby. It was like eating a cake, only with much, much, much more sugar. Sofia will love it.
We concluded our Rotterdam adventure with a tour of the harbor, the world's largest. At 8.20, it was more expensive and shorter than the ferry, but with narration in Dutch, English and French. Honestly, if you've seen one .... We got sidetracked on the way to the station at Hyper-Hyper, a dance club at rest on a Sunday evening, open only for film-festival goers. It is stark and modern, with red floors and padded cubes for seats, with two turntables resting on air cushions on the bar. It reminded some of the others of the club in A Clockwork Orange. I sat back as my companions had a pint and (in most cases) a smoke. Sheryl would like the look of this place, and the House Industries-inspired logo.
Rotterdam has a thriving shopping district in the center of town that was jumping even on a Sunday. It's certainly worth a return visit, as I didn't even scratch the surface of all it has to offer a tourist. In short: Ugly name, interesting city.
I hitched a ride down to Rotterdam on Saturday with Remco, a rental agent, and my friend Peter (from Mr. Flick's). Peter rented an apartment with Remco's help, and we rode with him when he went back home to Rotterdam. After a lunch of meatball broodjes (small, open-faced sandwiches eaten with a fork), Peter and I took a Fast Ferry to Dordrecht, a small town just up the Maas River. Three-euros-point-sixty (one way) for a fast, comfortable and high-speed 45-minute journey to a charming and ancient little town. We stopped in the pub (where, over a pint, Peter recounted the time he shot a police officer who was coming through the window of his mining-engineer's quarters in the Congo in the 1960s), then walked to the station and returned to The Hague just in time for another party at the apartment of another intern, on Van Aerssenstraat (Statenkwartier).
[Aside: The intern Sarah from America had a loud, wine-soaked gathering on Friday night, on Zoutkeetsingel. I had a long discussion about Iraq (what else?) with an intern from the Danish embassy. I found myself defending the war to him, just to introduce a contrary viewpoint. Parties here are like parties in Seattle, where the only differences of opinion are about who is more lefty. Nonetheless, these parties are absolutely fascinating. Meeting and getting to know (that is, networking with) this international mix of people is one of the blessings of this internship, but I would happily forego this for even one evening at home with Sheryl, Dar and Sof right now.]
[Aside bis (II): Avoiding alcohol here is rather difficult for me when a glass of bier costs the same as a glass of Sprite, but drinking to excess has been easy to avoid. Maintaining control is more important than the amusing fuzziness of intoxication. I simply can't bother myself to be blitzed in a foreign country.]
On Sunday, I went back to Rotterdam with a group of interns (Emily and Cheryl from America, Peter and Rachel from Canada, Pau from Espana, Lillian, Sonja and Jasmine from Australia, Francesco from Italy, Julian from the U.K. and others) to a film screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Ana y los otros is a slow-moving and contemplative, low-budget directorial debut from an Argentinian, shot on location in her hometown. It's about Ana, an unmarried and independent 30-something, searching for her old flame, Mariano. It would not have been my choice; I got swept up in the moment and gave it a four-of-five, but it's at-best a rental back home.
More significantly, I discovered that Ashes of Time by Wong Kar Wei is also being screened at the Festival, as is Lost in Translation.
Then I found it, the gem of the festival, relegated to late weekend screenings: The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo's Cannes stinker, subject of a vitriolic feud between Roger Ebert and the director, the film for which the director apologized to the hostile audience at Cannes for making such a "self-indulgent" film, the film that Roger Ebert continues to call "the worst film ever", a film that has no chance of being released in the States. It's showing Friday at 11 p.m. I must see it, even though this will require emerging from Hollands-Spoor station into the most dangerous neighborhood in The Hague in the wee hours of a Saturday morning, the trams having stopped running hours earlier. It will mean fixing up the bike my friend and co-worker Anees has lent to me (thankfully, an American mountain bike rather than a heavy and expensive steel Dutch bike). I hope the director will be present to flame the audience, but I don't hold out much hope for this.
Before Sunday's film, we ate poofretjes or silver-dollar sized pancakes cooked three-score at a time in a pock-marked, outdoor griddle. Toppings like Grand Marnier, whipped cream or strawberries are extra, but the "plain" version comes covered, nee smothered, in powdered sugar and topped with a liberal chunk of butter carved from the astonishing 10-lbs. block of the stuff sitting on the counter nearby. It was like eating a cake, only with much, much, much more sugar. Sofia will love it.
We concluded our Rotterdam adventure with a tour of the harbor, the world's largest. At 8.20, it was more expensive and shorter than the ferry, but with narration in Dutch, English and French. Honestly, if you've seen one .... We got sidetracked on the way to the station at Hyper-Hyper, a dance club at rest on a Sunday evening, open only for film-festival goers. It is stark and modern, with red floors and padded cubes for seats, with two turntables resting on air cushions on the bar. It reminded some of the others of the club in A Clockwork Orange. I sat back as my companions had a pint and (in most cases) a smoke. Sheryl would like the look of this place, and the House Industries-inspired logo.
Rotterdam has a thriving shopping district in the center of town that was jumping even on a Sunday. It's certainly worth a return visit, as I didn't even scratch the surface of all it has to offer a tourist. In short: Ugly name, interesting city.
