Last Saturday, I went with ESN to Rotterdam. We were supposed to get a city tour, but there was some miscommunication with the company so we got a reduced tour conducted by the ESN people.


River view
Somewhere along this river is the Pauluskerk, where free hard drugs are given to homeless people.

We were first brought to an art museum - Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. At first I feared it would only contain modern art, but luckily there was a mix of stuff inside.


Paul McCarthy - Santaclaus ("a 25-foot tall bronze sculpture of Santa Claus holding a butt plug")
Not all pieces of modern art are formless trash


Padded car


Pieter Bruegel de Oude - The Tower of Babel
I have the jigsaw at home

There was a room with a display of uncomfortable-looking furniture, presented as art. This brought to mind the PC blurb about Art at the exhibition by the intellectually disabled artists - who decides what is Art? If Steve Jobs takes a dump in an off-white plastic case, adds two grey buttons and a small LCD display, is that Art?


Roland Schimmel - Blind Spot (2006)
This piece is quite interesting as its primary purpose seems to be to screw up the brains of those looking at it, and give them massive headaches. It simulates the effect of multi-chromatic light, and leaves an image of itself in your retina even after you look away.


Koekkook, Winterlandschap


Faux relief
This looks like a relief carved in stone, but it's really a painting. Ingenious. Unfortunately I couldn't find a caption anywhere.


Venus de Milo Aux Tiroirs
Salvador Dali's take on the Venus de Milo - wth?! This pissed me off a lot.

Jeans slung so low you can see the string or the back of the thong, I've seen before. Jeans slung so low you can see more than half of the triangle of the G-string which covers the unmentionables - that's new.


Perspective machine
This interesting machine simulates perspective


Inside, 2 painted panels are placed in a V-shape, tapering to the back. Looking through the hole in the machine's front, you see everything in a sort of proper perspective.


Orpheus, Eurydice and Aristaios. Unfortunately I screwed up the second shot so I can't stitch it properly.


Rembrandt - Portrait of Aletta Adriaensdr


Abraham van Beijeren - Pronkstilleven (Still life)


Rubens - the Death of Hector


Bosch - the Pedlar

For some reason, there're lots of Chinese in Rotterdam. Besides the usual Chinese/Chinese-Indonesian restaurants, there were many shops with Chinese signs (eg a Diamond seller). In Maastricht all the hairdressers I saw (about 3?) were run by Chinese.

I went into one so-called Chinese-Surinamese food outlet, and under the Surinamese part of the menu was something which turned out to be roast pork or, as the man at the counter said, char siew. I asked incredulously how this was Surinamese food, and he said it was originally Chinese, then they went to Surinam and the rest is history.

One girl was enthusing about the Ladies' nights in Singaporean clubs. Supposedly they don't have that elsewhere in the world. Readers are invited to draw their own conclusions about the preferences of Singaporean women (and men).

I saw some very disgusting mannikins - they were hanging in the air suspended by a rod driven through their heads. I wonder who seeing them would buy whatever they were advertising.


Erasmus Bridge


Skyline from Erasmus Bridge



Bridge cables


Ditto

Somehow, I doubt the fur trimming and lining on female footwear/winter clothing helps to keep them warm.


Water view


Waterfront. Apparently the units fronting the water are desirable, but right behind is a bad neighbourhood.


Cube houses designed by Piet Bloom


Pencil building




Attic of a cube house - it's bigger than it looks from outside.


The old harbour






There was something wrong with the light in the Rotterdam subway



At the end of the day, we boarded a pancake boat for a short harbour cruise and an all-you-can-eat pancake buffet. The record was 14. I had 4 but was feeling very full by the time I finished the last one.


Pancake toppings
I realise I forgot to take a photo of the Dutch pancakes themselves. They're much flatter and bigger in diameter than the American ones. The fresh ones were a little crispy. There were 3 types - Natural, Apple (thin apple slices were embedded in the pancake) and Bacon (bacon strips were embedded in the body).

Ham and grated cheese was quite weird, though the white cheese was alright. The sweet toppings were the best though, with a few swirls of syrup (the icing sugar didn't work as well).

A lot of people tried to take pictures from the moving boat at night. With the glass window in front of them. And with the flash too. From what I saw, they didn't turn out very well. I tried going upstairs and took a shot from the open area at the back of the ship but it didn't turn out well.

In the second half of the cruise, the bottom deck - a pit filled with air-filled plastic balls - was opened, and mayhem ensued.





I got to take part in some of it too, thus fulfilling another of my latent fantasies.

On the way to the Rotterdam Central Station I saw a billboard advertising, among other things, boob jobs. It had before/after pictures of uncovered breasts. What a refreshing lack of ado about nothing.