The emptiness and the wind
When I first arrived in Rotterdam, I must say, I was shocked: primarily, because of the wind. I always used to complain about Porto Alegre (Brazil), my beloved hometown, which is also a typical port city and quite windy. In Rotterdam, though, the wind can take your soul away (not much after your bike had also flown away). One could also ask me: but, isn’t it just the same in any other city in The Netherlands?
Well, I haven’t been to all the cities in the country, but I would definitely say that here the wind is part of the architecture. Despite my initial horror sensation, I increasingly developed an intense love for this city during the 2 years I’m here (which, of course, is quite limited). Perhaps inspired by the recent sunny days we had, my intention is to write about the 2 things that make me love Rotterdam, apart from the typical things that every tourist would say about The Netherlands in general.
- The ways of covering the emptiness
Rotterdam was the only bombarded city in The Netherlands during the Second World War: a fact that left an enormous concrete (and symbolical) scar in the city. The famous sculpture signed by Ossip Zadkine shows a man with many legs and a big hole where his heart should be placed.
The impressive sculpture represents not only the horrors of the war but also the city that lost its soul, its centre and its old architecture style. By losing its old buildings, Rotterdam became an open space city: large avenues, big buildings, and new architecture styles scattered around the town. After the war, ambitious reconstruction programs took place and (not so suddenly) the city was shaped in an entirely new way. From yellow cube-shaped houses to amazing public parks, Rotterdam is somewhat a surprising combination of the old and the new.
The somewhat new architecture, though, seems to me as a way of covering the emptiness of the city. It’s quite poetic to bike through vast and windy spaces shaped with surprising sculptures and buildings.
2. Ethnic diversity and physical boundaries
Where trading is vibrant, immigration follows.
As an important historical port city, the economic features of Rotterdam had also contributed to building its fame of an ethnically-diverse place (of course, combined with local public policies on welcoming immigrant labour force). Almost 50% of the population has non-Dutch origins: a fact that can be used to express both the so-called “Dutch tolerance” on accepting “the other” as well as the recent anti-immigration movements in the country.
Despite the intense culturally-mixed environment, Rotterdam also shows clear signs of physical boundaries (like pretty much any other city in the world, I would suppose), which in this case are represented in the North-South regions divided by the river Maas.
North and South is also the title of my favourite collection of poems written by Elizabeth Bishop, in which she says at a certain point:
[…] the city grows down into his open eyes inverted and distorted. No. I mean distorted and revealed, if he sees it at all (Love Lies Sleeping. Elizabeth Bishop).
North and South for Bishop are mostly US and Brazil, both countries where she long-lived. From my point of view, though, North and South could be both The Netherlands and Brazil, or North and South regions of the Rotterdam as well.
The most obvious observations about such differences would mention the evident phenotypic differences between the two regions, the economic variances, the immigration that marks the south, the criminality index, and so on so forth. The local narrative on the geographies of the city hides traces of misjudgment and objectification. I must say that such a phenomenon isn’t new actually — Robert Erza Park studied migration and the city divisions in Chicago during 1930. Hence, what makes it a relevant remark is solely the fact that as an expat — my current condition — I can accept such narratives as given or contradict them, just because of my stranger condition.
By living in a liminal space where I am not a complete outsider, nor a total insider, I could say I see the city both “distorted and revealed”. Distorted because my writings will never be accurate, and revealed because at first, I could never notice too much difference between North and South when I first arrived here. I soon noticed that the locals’ impression on the geographies of the city is quite different than mine.
My notions of the city boundaries were certainly constructed after some people spontaneously commented where I should or not live. In the end, my decision on where to live was determined by the amount of laziness I would have with riding my bike.
It doesn’t matter whether you are in the North or South, the wind blows equally.
The combination of a windy, empty and cool city with the ethnic background and the personal traits of people are definitely the features I most appreciate in my new beloved town. However, I know this can be seen as a shallow portrait of the city (by a foreigner, which makes it even more superficial), but my profound passion for this city is big enough to make me write a still naive storyline.
