Is “De Verwoeste Stad” and the pain of a “The City Destroyed”…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

If you go around the side of the  Maritime Museum, you will quickly see an open “plein” (square) with an imposing statue in it.

This, probably the best known statue in Rotterdam was sculpted by the Russian artist Ossip Zadkine and has been a landmark feature in the city since it was unveiled in 1953.

In Dutch it’s known by two names: “De Verwoeste Stad” (The Destroyed City) and “Stad zonder hart” (City without a heart).

Ossip Zadkine produced the work  in bronze after witnessing the devastation and destruction of Rotterdam’s city centre after German bombs rained down in World War Two.  Zadkine had been in Paris and came to the Netherlands to visit a friend, and passing by the ruined city was shocked at seeing what was little was left of the centre first-hand.

This is the memorial to the day in 1940 when only a few buildings survived the bombing raids intact and the history and heart of the city was all but wiped out.

The  hole in the statue where the heart would have been, represents that destruction of the Rotterdam’s heart,  and 04 May every year   “Nationale Dodenherdenking” / “Herdenkingsdag“  is observed , the Dutch National Day of Remembrance.

On 04 May, the Dutch gather the length and breadth of the country to commemorate these fallen in military conflict and in peacekeeping service and to observe a two minute silence. This memorial is now one of The Netherlands major sites for this commemoration.

The figure clearly represents pain, the arms are outstretched to the sky in agony. It’s a compelling image and with reminders like these we are hopefully inspired and reminded that making Peace is always the better option than making war.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

The Winds of Change blow Over the Sea…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

I’m still taking you on a tour of Rotterdam via my archive photos taken last summer.

This post completes our short visit to the Rotterdam Maritime Museum… Yesterday I focused on artworks and a little of how ships looked inside, but today’s photos are more about the evolution and revolution of style and technology that has taken place, especially over the last one hundred years.

Long gone are the days when almost everything on board was made of wood, live animals were kept on deck as a food source for long voyages and cases were winched on board with ropes.

Electricity makes visibility, navigation and living on board a comparative luxury, safety features have been introduced and more fundamental changes like the massive size of container ships today and the speed at which they can travel the oceans would make any time travelling sea-farer of old, quake in his boots at the sight.

Looking at several photos in particular,  it’s clear that these days sailors are highly unlikely to have a stone carving on board to bring them good luck and save their souls whilst at sea, and luckily their clothing choices are vastly more suited to the conditions they live and work in at sea today too. Present day seamanship is vastly different to that of a century ago, it might have less “character” but it’s certainly safer.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

The Waves of Time wash into the Maritime Museum…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

The next stop in our summer 2010 tour is the Rotterdam Maritime Museum.

We only have a short time there so it’s a bit of a whistle-stop tour, but well worth a visit if you are interested in the sea and the history of people’s interaction with it.

First I want to look at some of the many artworks on show… they show that life was hard and that life at sea must have been hard. One painting even shows sailors hunting polar bears at the pole, icebergs surround the ships, a perilous trip to be made in the region even now, let alone back then for wooden vessels under sail.

Considering that history shows us that most sailors couldn’t swim, it is amazing that any sailor survived a life at sea.

Compared to today’s standards, technology in the ships, navigation aids and maps was rudimentary and the skill and courage that sailors must have had is amazing.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

History inside the ships…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

An Oil Spill Cascades…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

We are back in the heart of Rotterdam continuing our tour of the Port and parts of the city, that I took last summer.

We stop by the Maritime Museum and outside, across the street, I spy a sculpture.

It’s called “Cascade”, is a towering 8 meters (26 feet) high and is the 2010 work of artist Joep van Lieshout and his studio “Atelier Van Lieshout”.

There are eighteen oil barrels in the stack and it appears that oil is leaking out the barrels and running own the column.

Then when you look  more closely at the “oil”  you see that they are in fact human figures.

The sculptors website tells us: “The sculpture by Atelier Van Lieshout evokes associations with the current economic crisis, the exhaustion of raw materials and the bankruptcy of the consumer society “Always striving for a solution” according to Joep van Lieshout.. These interpretations are brought into sharper focus by the sculpture’s location at the junction of Coolsingel and Blaak, at the centre of the commercial and financial heart of Rotterdam.”

The sculpture was set in place in March 2010 and I find it to be  a strong and thought provoking image…

For me personally, it represents more that fact the people are as much the problem as the materials they use (oil spill / pollution) and there is something in the double entendre of the oil/people that is both strangely whimsical on one hand and a dark stark truth on the other.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Everything Neatly Contained!

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Decades ago, cargo was stored in the holds of ships,  packed in crates, barrels and loaded mostly by hand using cranes, pulley’s and nets.

Space on board was not ergonomically used and loading and unloading took manpower and time.

Then came the Container… steel boxes of uniform size what had ships specifically designed to carry them.

Containers got bigger, and the ships to carry them got bigger still. Times changed and today container shipping is an international mega-industry.

Rotterdam’s Container Port works around the clock, year round.

The massive cranes are manned, with crane operators up high in cabins on the cranes.

If you look carefully in the last video clip, you will see that the operators cabins can travel the length of the boom, so that they can be both in visual range of the ship at the dock at one end and the container “trucks” at the other.

The ships are not tied up at the dock at all, instead there are several tugs alongside, keeping steady pressure on the side of the ship, and keeping it push up against the dockside the entire time that loading or unloading is taking place.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

The reasons for this are twofold: speed and money, ships queue to book a “slot” at the quay, and they pay hundreds of thousands of Euros per hour for their slot. (If I remember correctly I think a figure of Euro 35.000,- per hour was mentioned).

It’s so incredibly expensive that they don’t waste time tying up the ship, they just keep it pushed up against the quay and start unloading or loading immediately.

The “truck” transporters that the crane drivers set to containers onto are driver-less, guided by network of computer electronics and a special grid to follow laid out beneath the tarmac.

The cranes that take and stack the containers are also completely automated and everything is carefully ordered to that the correct containers are stacked not only in the correct place but also in the right order.

There are special sensors in the automated trucks so that if if something goes awry and they hit something, or something hits them, the whole network comes to an emergency stop.

We watch from behind a large fence (I poke the camera lens though the mesh to get the photographs)  and the whole “dance of the machines” is quite mesmerizing.

Later see a truck that hauls containers from one area to another area with a multiple trailer “road train” style, as used in  Australian haulage, except that here it’s only use for within the Container Port.

Once again the camera can not do the scene justice… the line of containers stretches further into the distance than the lens can focus, as do the gigantic cranes on the quay.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

It is the Custom, to pay your Taxes….

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

In days of old, well before large international corporations, you used to travel over the border, buy commercial goods for your business and when you returned home you’d have to stop at the Customs House at the border crossing and pay the import duty you owed to the tax-man.

“Belastingdienst/Douane” is the Tax / Customs” building, and of course, as trade has become more International, their offices have grown considerably in size.

A few posts ago I mentioned that Rotterdam has become renowned for some very enterprising and original ideas when it comes to its architecture after the Second World War.

This is one that I really like because they had the  delightful idea of actually incorporating one of the old buildings into the new premises! Priceless!

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

When Consumerism is an Industry…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Yes, even more industry on our tour of the inner and outer harbours of Rotterdam.

Why do I want to document this? you might ask? Well, because this is a tour that if you should ever get the chance to make it, is even better done in person than represented in bite sized pieces in a blog.

There is simply no way to convey the sheer enormity of the place, the scale of what’s going on, it truly has to be seen to be realised.

I’m realist enough to know that not everyone is able to travel the world, but learning at least something about the bits that aren’t necessarily in the top spots of the guide books teaches us not only about the nation we are visiting in the virtual realm, but also how it actually effects each of us in real terms.

Those cheap tee-shirts and plastic toys made in China? they pass though here and on to most of the countries of Europe, just the same as they do in  the biggest ports in Asia, Africa or North and South America.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

That Greek or Italian cheese you like most from the deli or the Spanish paprika,  it all passes though here on it’s way to supermarket shelves around the world. Rotterdam Harbour also boasts a  building that is one of the biggest cool-store and frozen goods buildings in the world.

Sadly I didn’t get a photo, but imagine a warehouse building that looked to be about seven stories high and stretches over hectares and you have the general idea…

How we live in the Western world is represented here.  Entry and exit points like Rotterdam Harbour expose the heavy industry needed to sustain and maintain our consumerist ways, our material mindedness and energy burning existence.

If you want to be brutal, this is the dark side of your local High Street, Main Street, and Mall.

It’s part of what makes a lot of Western nations tick.  Consumerism is an industry in itself.

That thought shocks and awes me in equal measure.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

A Industrial Road and Where it Leads…

I’m still taking you on a tour of the Port of Rotterdam that Himself and I went on last year.

We have transferred from the boat that took us though the inner harbour back to our coach, and have now driven out to a large “polder” (area of reclaimed land)  that is quite amazing to behold. A few decades ago all of this was under the sea. Some sixty plus square kilometers have been reclaimed in order to extend the  Port of Rotterdam even further, and since the land reclamation project is still going… it’s still growing.

We quickly find ourselves in the thick of some very heavy industry, the true scale of which can not be done justice with a few photographs. All of these were taken out of the front or side window of the coach… Himself and I get the first two seats up front as I turn into a very green passenger if I sit in the back ( and I don’t mean “green” in the eco-friendly sense).

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Markers by the side of the road, all the way around the outer port, show where the underground gas transport systems are.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

But just when you thought that it was all work and no play, out here I spy something that tells me someone has a sense of humour…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

If you are Carrying Dangerous Goods… Paint yourself Red!

Rotterdam Harbour is sectioned off into sectors of  like shipments. All ships that carry chemical or dangerous goods are in this section.I have learned that any ship that belongs in this section, is required by International law to have at least part of it’s hull painted in red. A green hull means something else (but in the stream of information we were given, I can’t remember what).

In this section of the harbour we even pass a ship that has it’s own very large heli-deck on the front (In case of Calamity?).

Let’s take a look…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Thousands of these barges ply Europe’s big rivers, delivering phosphates, fuels, chemicals etc up the River’s Maas, Rhone, Rhine…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

When Moving Your Head Office is taken Literally…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

If you have ever watched programmes on the Discovery Channel that feature monster structures and machines, then you will probably have seen one of the biggest Dutch companies in action.

The company is Mammoet, and like the word “mammoth” that this translates into, they specialise in not only making big lifting machines but especially in making a way of transporting them, and any other out-sized machines or parts.

Their most famous product is a mega-massive version of flat-bed deck style vehicle, made up of many sections.

Each section has it’s own set of massive double wheels that rotate in several directions, and you can fit as many sections together as is necessary to for the width and length of your load.

Since each individual section of the whole arrangement can support massive tonnages of weight, this is often the only way that complete sections of power stations, drilling apparatus and mining equipment etc can be moved to where they are wanted.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

So what does such a company do when they are building a new state of the art Head Office within the harbour of Rotterdam?

Well,  first they prepare the foundations, complete with connections to all necessary amenities whilst the rest of the building is being built externally off-site, and then they use their own product (heavy lifting and moving machinery) to transport the completed structure into place…

… of course.

All that remained was to almost literally ‘plug  in” to the connections already made in the foundations and the building is good to go! Ingenious!

With a beautiful reference to the buildings new position within the Port of Rotterdam and a nod to the long history that goes with it, the Mammoet Head Office building is shaped like one of the giant bollards that ships use to tie up to quayside and has affectionately been nicknamed “The Bollard” by the locals.

Not many companies can say that they moved their own head office into place…

We were told the story by the retired harbour-man who was a mine of information on our tour, and later I looked up the company website, which shows actual photos of the move.

http://www.mammoet.com/Default.aspx?tabid=1268

(photograph © Kiwidutch)