Friend C and I recently had a day out and spent it in…Rotterdam.
The country was our oyster, but a combination of factors had led to the home game. I’m happy to report that we still managed to find stuff to do and see that was (partially) new to us.
We kicked things off with coffee at the coffee shop in the library and then got a move on to the Museum 40-45 museum.
Neither of us had been here before and shame on us because it was very interesting.
Insider tip: the national museum card is valid there and the museum has free entry to all on the first Saturday of the month.

This museum is located just outside the Coolhaven metro station, so a perfect destination for a rainy morning. It’s a small-ish museum but packed with materials and information and we easily spent an hour and a half browsing the shelves, reading and learning.
The museum is dedicated to Rotterdam during World War II, and hosts a gazillion objects donated by people who lived through that time.
From a deck of cards made and used by people in hiding, to the lock that was used to close up the barn where Rotterdam citizens had to report/were taken for deportation, and half of a children’s tea set that was the only surviving item from a house that had burned down in a bombing.
Hitler’s Mein Kampf is also following me everywhere, because an original copy of it is one of the first items you see as you enter the exhibition.
Along with the many, many items on display, a timeline with notable events of WWII in local and bigger context is displayed, and there is an immersive short film about the May 1940 bombing that gave me goosebumps.
There is a small exhibition about rebuilding the city, and an interactive section that is specifically aimed at school kids (but was still interesting for grownups) about discrimination and judgment.
I thought the photo exhibition about bombed out cities across the globe was impressive. Several of the pictures were of Rotterdam, but there were also pictures of Aleppo and Baghdad. Because they are all in black-and-white you don’t notice the different locations until you start reading the text. Rubble looks exactly the same anywhere. It’s painful / shameful to realize that people keep doing this to each other.

After all that we needed some fresh air to process what we’d seen and because it was no longer raining, we walked back into city center for a late lunch.
After lunch we continued our walk along the wooden pedestrian bridge Luchtbrug from Central District to North and back for a 5k walkabout.
By then it was not only dry but the sun had come out as well, so we treated ourselves to the drinking of a few beers on a terrace.
The beers led to pizzas and while I’d like to say we hopped on a train and metro to get back home, it was more that we hoisted ourselves onto them.
All in all, a day well spent in great company.