Rotterdam

Whew!  I've been so busy I haven't even told you that I arrived in Rotterdam and now am already in Copenhagen!

But I'll concentrate on one city at a time.  Rotterdam has been a surprise.  I thought it would be a large bustling city but it seems much more laid back.  What has been nice is that bicycles (no helmets!) and transit rule the roads.  I was quite anxious about how to ensure I not only don't get run over by a car but that I dont' get run over by a bicycle!  There are dedicated lanes and heaven help you if you're in the wrong lane at the wrong time!  Cars are smaller and parking is not easy to find and very pricey once located.  And oddly, it is difficult to find a good salad in my neighbourhood.  I've been pining....

Here are a few pics from Rotterdam:

 

This sculpture is outside the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (http://www.boijmans.nl/en/) which is up the street from my hotel.  As luck would have it, it was free on Wednesday.  Being a free day at the museum meant that many, many folks were taking the opportunity to explore.  Classes of children, youth, aspiring artists, tour groups of seniors and random tourists - everyone was there.  I wish there was time to go back.  They have some amazing pieces and I'm gaining a fondness for Surrealism.

Here is one piece from the museum:

Maurizio Cattelan, Untitled (2002)

You can see all the way down into the storage room where the sculpture is standing on a chair, on a table.   It apparently took the museum years to get permission to make the space into what is the employee's break room.  The scupture is supposed to be a self-sculpture of the artist.  There are many other images that display if you put the artist's name in Google.

Here is part of the walk back to the hotel:

 
 

I'm staying in a very central neighbourhood that has been purposefully 'revitalized'.  The hotel (Hotel Bazar:  http://www.bazarrotterdam.com/read/middle_eastern_room_204?sublist=25) is in a heritage building which is both fantastic and terrible.  It is fantastic because the rooms are all unique and there are many touches of the 'old' or unusual that charm and entice.  Terrible because the owners cannot upgrade for today's reality, for example the windows are single paned letting in noise and letting out the heat but they cannot be replaced, to preserve the heritage value of the site.  So terribly fantastic or fantastically terrible:)  Either way, incredibly central and if I was a tourist, instead of a student, I would choose to stay here again.  As a student (getting up early, needing a good sleep and a place to work) it is less than ideal.  

I wanted to share one of my favourite things about the hotel - the lamps and the ceilings:

Some of the ceilings are completely covered in tin or in strings upon strings of 'christmas tree' lights, woven into a cloud of twinkling sunshine.  Throughout the whole hotel you will find these lamps.  They are from all over - Morocco, Turkey, Ethiopia and Mauritania and many are for sale.  I was sorely tempted to add to my baggage by buying one or two of these wonderful pieces of everyday art.