On this day, we went back to road tripping across the Netherlands, seeing Delft, Rotterdam, and Kinderdijk.

We spent our time walking around the town square, where the city hall was located. The city hall is an example of the Dutch Renaissance architectural style, characterized by a symmetrical facade, ornate gables, and intricate detailing that reflects the artistic and cultural influences of the time. The facade showcases red brickwork, sandstone embellishments, and elegant windows. The central tower rises proudly, featuring a clock and a carillon, adding to the building’s visuals.

In front of the city hall, there was a outdoor exhibition by students from the Delft University of Technology, whose goal was “promoting a sustainable future by building the world’s most efficient hydrogen powwered city car”. It really reminded me of something similar students from UBC had been doing back in the day when I was at UBC, except it was a gasoline car (renewables were not that big at that time).

On the other side of the square is the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), renowned for its impressive Gothic design, rich history, and its role as the final resting place of members of the Dutch and Prussian royal family. Other notable people, such as Johannes Vermeer, also found their final resting place in Delft. This is something I missed out on – I only realized this after I had left.

In Rotterdam, we returned to the market hall, which offers a bustling food market, gourmet shops, and residential spaces. Countless stalls and vendors showcase a kaleidoscope of fresh produce, artisanal cheeses, aromatic spices, succulent meats, and an array of international cuisine. We ate a variety of things like a duck confit burger, satay skewers, stroopwaffles, samosas, and pickled herring.

We walked over to the nearby old harbour from the markethall, a historic waterfront area dating back to the 14th century and was once a bustling hub of maritime activity. It’s also the home of heritage bulidings like the Witte Huis, known as the first high-rise buildin gin Europe. Today, the area has been transformed into a picturesque urban space adorned with vibrant terraces, cafes, and boutiques. It’s a huge contrast to the Cube Houses next door that are a set of residences shaped like cubes tilted at a 45-degree angle.

Our final destination of the day to the town of Kinderdijk, we saw a different set of windmills from what we saw a few days back. Netherlands’ windmills are a testament to the centuries-long battle against the sea. The majority of the Netherlands is situated below sea level, making it vulnerable to flooding from rivers, and the sea. Windmills played a crucial role in pumping water out of low-lying areas and draining marshes to reclaim land for agriculture and habitation. Both Kinderdijk and Zaanse Schans are popular destinations to see Dutch windmills, but Kinderdijk seemed to have a more serene and rural atmosphere, surrounded by quiet waterways and fields, while Zaanse Schans is more accessible since it’s close to Amsterdam, where most international travelers fly into.

Here’s more of Delft, Rotterdam, and Kinderdijk

The Hague (Den Haag)

The first stop is The Hague in the Netherlands. It’s the home of the International Court of Justice (pictured above). This is the international court that resolves international disputes that the UN is involved in. It was involved in well known cases such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to judge the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to judge the perpetrators of crimes committed during the internal struggles in Yugoslavia that eventually led to its dissolution.

For lunch, we searched around for something to eat and we could try some herring since that’s a popular dish in the Netherlands. We found a street food stall near us not far from where we were and proceeded to go inside and order. One problem though… the entire menu was in Dutch and there was no English to be found anywhere. We stood there looking confused for a moment, before I piped up and simply asked the staff (knowing that the Netherlands has a very high degree of English literacy) what we should order. He simply replied, “herring sandwich!”. It’s raw herring preserved in a brine in a sandwich along with condiments such as raw onions and pickles. It’s got a nice fishy freshness to it (like sashimi), but a saltier and more sour flavour because of the brine. This is going to be one of those foods that I’ll crave once I leave and can’t get anywhere else.

Another cool place to visit in The Hague is the Madurodam – it’s a park built purely on minatures. Imagine famous landmarks in the Netherlands, like the canals of Amsterdam, old town city squares, and palaces, but in miniature form! As a fan of Lego, I can definitely appreciate looking at miniatures!

Rotterdam

Next, we drove to Rotterdam in the Netherlands and stopped by the Market Hall for more food (I’m always down to eat). This time, we had yet another Dutch speciality: the stroopwafel. It’s hard to say no to two thin crispy wafers with gooey caramel in between.

And because I really enjoy eating protein, I couldn’t resist trying some cured meat. I think this is more of a Spanish thing as opposed to Dutch thing though. I found the flavour way too salty for my tastes (and I use a lot of salt when cooking), but I’m not sure what it’s supposed to taste like.

The market hall also has a nice selection of spices – kind of apt considering their colonial past trading spice and other goods in the Dutch East Indies.

And of course cheese! It’s so nice to see all the wheels of cheese, in all these different colours and sizes.

Baarle-Hertog / Baarle-Nassau

After leaving Rotterdam, we headed towards Belgium – well kind of. The cool thing about Baarle-Hertog / Baarle-Nassau is that a border between Belgium and the Netherlands cuts right through the town in seemingly random spots. You could just be walking down the street along the main avenue of the town and randomly end up in the Netherlands, then in Belgium, and then back again.

On our way out of the town, we noticed lane lines that we hadn’t seen before in North America. At first, we didn’t know why the lines were painted like that, but upon closer analysis, the road is simply a road shared by both cars and bicycles and the red section shows where the bikes should be, and the grey area is the section where cars should be when passing a bicycle. By allocating a space for the car to pass, the cars don’t get too close to the cyclists, thus reducing the risk of an accident. How cool!

Antwerp

Soon, we were fully in Belgium in the city of Antwerp and took a stroll in the old town square. The buildings here look pretty Belgian because of the way the roof inclines – it’s as if there are little steps as opposed to a smooth incline (so-called stepped gables).

This concludes our successful first day of the trip! On day two, we will travel to Oosterscheldekering, Ypres, and Dunkirk.

Photos

• The Hague
• Rotterdam
• Baarle-Hertog
• Antwerp

Stockholm used to be just an island, and since Stockholm has expanded outside of the island, the island portion has become the old town, known as Gamla Stan.

Some buildings in the old town have fake windows, because glass was expensive back then (3rd floor middle window).

There’s a random piece of Viking runestone on the corner of a building. And it’s protected by a cannon barrel on the street corner…

The Scandanavian countries really like their royal guards…

H&M sells home products in Sweden! I haven’t seen that anywhere else.

At our hostel, we met some awesome people and went on a bike tour with some of them, guided by a local Swedish fellow. He took us to the top of a hill overlooking the river and Gamla Stan.

Welcome to Earth!!

Our guide showed us this cool snack. It’s herring with cucumber and onions on flatbread.

This is an indoor bike tunnel going under a bridge!!

This was part of the common area at our hostel. They did a good job with that antique look and they even made us take our shoes off when inside.

At the Stockholm Royal Armoury, they showed off a bunch of carriages. Since we are nerdy engineers, we spent a while analyzing how its suspensions worked.

I heard Swedish meatballs are famous.

The Vasa Museum was probably the most incredible attraction. The Vasa was a Swedish warship that sank on its maiden voyage. It was supposed to be a symbol of Swedish military might at the time, but it sank because it was too top-heavy due to the many cannons it had on board and not enough width to counter the tipping of the ship from its weight. It was later discovered that the ship was very well preserved and now it is on display.

What is more Swedish than going to Ikea and eating meatballs? There is a free shuttle that goes to Ikea too!

The best part of the trip was meeting a bunch of cool people in our hostel room! We had a room of 8 and every single person was fun to hang out with as opposed to normally I don’t get to talk to everybody. This time, the 8 of us got to chill in the room having beers and stuff. One of them was from Kentucky who was currently living in Alabama – of course all the America jokes were directed at her. Another was from Australia who had just finished his contract with the ANZAC navy after serving in Afghanistan and Iraq – he was quite open in talking about his experiences and I learned a ton from him! I also learned a nice trick to cooking pasta from one of the Italians: always salt the water before cooking the pasta! He even said that people thought he was crazy when they saw him salting the water. I also got some good hookups in Shanghai from our Chinese roommate – awesome when I decide to go there! It was amazing how well we all clicked and definitely an unforgettable experience in my travels.

That’s it for Stockholm!

Photo album: Stockholm

Someone told me that the pastries were really good, and they were totally correct!!

This is the Danish Parliament building. They also allow a small number of people to go up to the top of that tower for free!! We did have to wait for about 20 minutes though, but I think that was a not so well known destination.

Everybody says that Nyhavn is a must-see destination. It’s definitely gorgeous, but everything around here is super pricey!!

Amalienborg is the home of the Danish royal family. Sometimes people see the Crown Prince of Denmark going in an out of the palace dressed like a normal person. The building with the dome at the back is the Marble Church.

These palace guards walked right by me!! Can’t imagine wearing the full uniform on a blazing hot day…

Next up, was a chill bike ride around the city going at a slow 10 km/h. The weather really cooperated with us! It was a weird change going from wearing a full bicycle kit while riding my roadbike to wearing street clothes and riding this commuter with a basket on top…

Randomly stumbled upon this really cool looking fountain, known as Gefionspringvandet.

We rode through this old school star-shaped fortress that has been turned into a nice greenspace!

North of there was the Little Mermaid statue that everybody talks about. Everybody says it’s a must-see attraction, but the most underwhelming. They make it look so big in the pictures but in reality it’s tiny.

We rode past a military installation and saw this interesting sign… They’re really up to date with this drone stuff.

I was in Copenhagen around the same time as Chester Bennington from Linkin Park passed away. He even left a mark on the people in Copenhagen.

There’s a reason why people say Copenhagen is the bike capital of the world.

The white buildings in the distance is Paper Island – a hipster place to hang out and eat food.

It’s so busy here…

To my surprise, I found an ostrich burger… It definitely had a light taste. I’ve heard it tastes a lot like beef, but I didn’t get that impression.

Next, we went to Freetown Christiania – an area that the people there self proclaim as autonomous. The area was formed by squatters on land used by the military. Today it is a kind of like area where the police in Copenhagen don’t really enforce their jurisdiction (although they can), and it is governed by the people who belong to that community who have created their own rules. All the houses have graffiti on them, the paint on the walls is slowly flaking off, and every house has tons of advertisement posters painted on them. The people in the community are either hobos or hippies and sometimes it’s hard to tell which – and they’re probably all high as a kite. If you’re looking for a wild party, you’ll probably find it here. It’s a shame that I wasn’t allowed to take photos inside.

Inside the city hall, there is an astronomical clock. The fastest gear completes a revolution every ten seconds and the slowest every 25,753 years. I have no idea what kind of information it shows, but I can appreciate the mechanisms as someone who studied mechanical engineering!

This was probably the best meal on the entire trip. A sampler of the most Danish food ever at Skindbuksen. When we went in, we were the only people inside who looked like tourists and everybody else looked local, which was a good sign, but we stood out. The owner of the restaurant came by with a giant plate of delicious food and loudly said to us, “this is what we eat in Denmark, you should try this!”. For a brief moment, our interaction with him gathered the attention of the entire restaurant, while it felt like all the locals were just judging us tourists… It was a tad awkward. BUT the food was absolutely delicious. There was pickled herring, deep fried fish filet, smoked salmon, roasted pork, and pork filet! The other tables were looking at our food with jealousy.

At the bar in our hostel, we met someone who was working in Silicon Valley as a software engineer who happened to be working and travelling. She told me she graduated at UC Berkeley and so I asked her if she had seen the Amazon store there (this). She told me how awesome it was to have something like that there and to her surprise, I revealed that I am actually one of the engineers who worked on it!

That’s it for Copenhagen!

Photo album: Copenhagen

As one of the largest port cities in Europe, we got a chance to go to Hamburg to see its beauty.  We went there by car and saw much of the historical part of the city as well as took a ferry ride along the coast of the Elbe River and walked along the city’s canals.  The weather was pretty much raining for the whole time we were there.  As my friend put it, “when you go to Hamburg, plan for rain”.

The Drive

We left work at around noon to pick up our rental car.  It took us a bit longer than we expected because we had to go grocery shopping so we could have lunch and dinner in the car on the way there for our 6 hour drive (or so we thought).  The drive ended up taking 8 hours because of a stau (traffic jam).

The car we got from the rental company was a Mercedes-Benz C220.  When we got into the car, it smelled like new and being in such a new car for a road trip was undoubtedly awesome. We only got this car because it was the cheapest car with automatic transmission available.  I guess the Renault that we got last time was booked for today.  I wish that I got the chance to drive it though.

On the way there, we got to see a lot of the German countryside (as anyone typically does when going from one major city to another).  On the grass plains and knolls, we saw countless villages, farms, vineyards, and the like.  We even saw farms of wind turbines and solar panels.

After a few hours of driving, we stopped a few times.  We stopped at a rest area and at this middle-of-nowhere village.  The GPS guided us off the highway and into this village just to avoid the traffic jam.  For the first third of the trip, I sat in the front while three of my friends had to squish together in the back.  When it was my turn to sit in the back, I didn’t really feel the discomfort while I was reading on my friend’s Kindle.  I ended up going through about 90 pages of Band of Brothers.  Maybe the book was so interesting that I just completely zoned out of the real world for a little bit.

We reached our hostel at around 9 at night and parked the car.  After moving our stuff into our room, we began our sightseeing tour of Hamburg.

Reeperbahn

Our first destination was the Reeperbahn street.  Similar to Amsterdam, this area is one of the most famous red light districts in the world.  The whole area was full of sex shops, strip clubs, and brothels.  On the street corner, many women wearing fanny packs kept trying to approach tourists and we figured that these women were all prostitutes (that stuff is legal in Germany).

One of the more peculiar things was that there was a church that stood pretty much in the core of the whole area.  Really convenient for people to go to confess their sins I guess.

We meant to find a bar here for a drink, but pretty much all of the places reeked with pungent cigarette smoke or was way too loud.  Two of my biggest pet peeves in one place.  We ended up just going back to the hostel instead.

In order to keep up my “try-as-much-kinds-of-beer-as-possible mentality”, I tried a type of beer called Astra Urtyp.  It tasted horrible – too much of hops flavour.  Some of the others drank a few more beers and got tequila shots before heading out again.  As usual, I went to sleep.  The next morning, I found that they returned at around 5:30 in the morning.

The Rathaus

At around 11, on a cloudy day with a large and persistent ocean breeze (it was super cold even with my jacket on), we showed up at the meeting point for the walking tour – a Starbucks.  This tour company receives some sort of sponsorship from them.  Our tour guide, didn’t look like a German, and when he spoke, a clear Northern USA accent came about – apparently, he had been living in Germany for some time.  He led us to the first destination of the tour – the Rathaus (city hall).

Located by the Alster River, this rathaus replaced the old one that was destroyed in the fire of 1842.  This building looked quite similar in form to other city halls, like the one in Munich and Vienna, with a clock tower-like structure that extended directly above the main entrance.  Right above the gate of the main entrance, the Hamburgers proudly displayed their coat of arms that depicted the old fortress of Hammaburg (where the city got its name) that used to exist in the area before its destruction by the Vikings.  Once more this coat of arms was displayed on the clock tower of the rathaus, just beneath a large antiquated mechanical clock.  Statues of German Kaisers decorated the side of the building as each one stood in a line just beneath the rooftop.

In front of the building was a giant courtyard and during World War II, a bomb landed here, but didn’t explode.  If it had, the rathaus would have been badly damaged.  The bomb was defused and the timing mechanism removed from the bomb is now on display in the rathaus.  In the courtyard, the Hamburgers held the Stuttgart Wine Festival, which apparently coincided with the Hamburg Fish Market in Stuttgart.  Here, people set up tents selling South German cuisine – the kind of German food that I’m always used to eating. 

Along the Alster River stood a giant stone plaque engraved with a message saying that 40000 sons of the city gave their life for us all.  Everyday, people going to the rathaus are reminded of the tragedy that befell the country.  Beside it, swans, ducks and other birds frolicked about and went on with their day to day lives.

Buildings on the other side of the river formed a canal much like in Amsterdam.  Canals could be seen throughout much of the city and in fact, the city holds the world record for having the most amount of bridges.  At first I thought Amsterdam’s 900 bridges was a lot, but apparently Hamburg has around 2300.

St. Peter’s Church

Although, not so significant as a work of architecture, many believe this place to be the site of where the old Hammaburg fortress once existed.  When we stood at the entrance of this church, the tour guide said, “welcome to the highest point of Hamburg!”  I looked around and just saw a gentle slope and nothing more.  I guess Hamburg must not have any mountains! 

Besides being a church, this building once served as a stables for Napoleon’s forces.  Not long after the Napoleonic Wars, the church was destroyed in the fire of 1842.  Despite the fire, much of the art in the building was saved including the lion shaped door knocker – the oldest artifact in the city.  At the back of the church, vegetation grew along the brick walls over the years and not far beside it, a wooden sign stood with directions to various places for pilgrimages.

Expressionist Architecture

During the height of Hamburg’s power in sea trade, many firms set up offices in the city.  Many of these firms had buildings resembling the architecture style of the expressionists – elements of the building’s exterior would reflect the purpose of the building.  For example, in one of the accounting houses for sea trade, one could see elements of the building protruding from its side in the shape of a caravel or an anchor.

In another building, known as the Chilehaus, held the shape of a ship and above the front entrance, there were various objects representing the country of Chile.  Similarly, in the Afrikahaus, there was a giant statue of a tribesman wielding a spear and behind the statue on the gate, was a sculpture of a plant indigenous to Africa.

We also visited the Patriotische Gesellschaft (no idea what that is in English), but this building too had examples of the expressionist art.  Statues of caravels and Poseidon stood on the roof.

World War II Stuff

While on the tour, the guide pointed out a plaque on the side of a building and on it was information saying that the building was once the location of the firm that manufactured the Zyklon B gas that killed millions of people in the death camps.  This plaque used to be located at the main entrance of the building, but the building owners and people working there did not want a daily reminder of those atrocities.  To counteract this, they used a different entrance as the main one instead.

Another destination, the Church of Saint Nicholas was one of the many buildings destroyed during the instead bombing raids on Hamburg.  The church did not get a complete repair after the war, but instead it now stands as a memorial – another reminder of the devastation of World War II.

Deichstrasse

Located near a large network of canals, this area of the city is the oldest part of Hamburg.  Undoubtedly, this area was filled with old architecture and complete with the cobblestone roads that are so prevalent in Europe.  The building style also resembled a lot of 18th and 19th century architecture. 

There would have been more buildings in this area, but through several fires and bombings, much of it was destroyed.  In fact, one of the buildings here was where the fire of 1842 started.  It must have been reconstructed since then.

Speicherstadt

Literally translated, the title means a “city of warehouses”, which indeed is what the area was for – storing cargo.  Back in the day, this area used to be where the Hamburgers traded without having to deal with customs tariffs.

As the size of cargo ships got larger, these buildings began to be obsoleted as many of these cargo ships could not fit in the narrow city canals.

HafenCity

Probably the most modern part of the city, this district serves as a playground for architects.  Much of the buildings here don’t follow any sort of mainstream design ideas – lots of buildings here looked really bizarre.

One building to note though, is the concert house under construction.  It has the shape of ocean waves to represent the city’s rich history of sea trade.  Originally budgeted for 100 million euros, due to construction delays and other unfortunate events, the cost of the building is now nearing 500 million euros.

Before this area became popular, the city had trouble getting people to move here, so they rented out flats here for as low as 500 euros a month, but now people can’t rent a flat here for anything less than 3000 euros a month.

Shopping and Food

After our tour, some of my friends couldn’t stand the freezing ocean wind anymore and decided they had to go buy a hoodie.  The wind was so strong that the clouds weren’t just floating across anymore.  There was like a wind speed of about 20 km/h.  We walked around the old town and found an H&M.  I looked around inside and to my surprise, I found that the prices at this H&M seemed to be a lot higher than Stuttgart.  Otherwise, I most probably would have bought something there.

Later on, we went back to the old part of Hamburg for traditional Hamburg cuisine.  We entered a restaurant that had a theme of sailing.  The wall had on display some schematics and black and white photos of various types of ships.  The color scheme of the place even coincided with the stereotypical blue and white colour combination of sailors. We went to eat at around 3, so it was kind of empty at the time.

The food I tried here was Labskaus – a dish typically served in Northern Germany and according to Wiki, “the main ingredients are salted meat or corned beef, potatoes, and onion. Some – non-traditional – recipes put beetroot, pickled gherkin, or even herring into it.”  Mine was served with beetroot and pickled herring, which was typical of the Hamburg style.

Hamburg Hafen

After our meal, we went to the harbour for a ferry ride along the Elbe River.  The ferry drove along the coastline and gave us a really good view of the city.  We rode the ferry from HafenCity all the way to the beach near the Elbtunnel.  In addition to the city scape, we even saw a docked submarine and a cruise ship about to begin its journey.  The travellers on the ship happened to be doing their lifeboat safety drill as we passed by so the people on the two ships happily waved to each other.

The ocean wind we felt on the ship was so strong that I probably needed a winter coat to keep warm.  The wind even caused the waves to be strong enough such that water splashed onto the deck of the boat and onto everyone standing on it.

On the other side of the river, miles of cranes lined up the shore, ready to unload any cargo on ships that docked.  What we were seeing was the second largest port in Europe, the largest being the one in Rotterdam.

Bar District

Supposedly, this area is known as the bar district (at least that’s what we called it).  Despite its name though, there was a really tight concentration of bars here, but the cost of beer was even more than Stuttgart.

At the bar/restaurant, I ordered an apple strudel to help combat my hunger from walking around all day instead of going for beer like everyone else did (although I did have a little bit).  The apple strudel I got wasn’t that expensive and it looked and tasted amazing.

Fish Market

The next morning, we went to the fish market – Hamburg is famous for it.  However, we got there a little late, so by the time we got there, a lot of the places were closing down.  As a last ditch attempt to sell more stuff, a lot of shops there started giving people really good deals on food like selling a whole box of fruit for only 1 euro.  I would have bought it if I could eat all of that.  A pile of garbage behind all these people went to show how much food they sold that day.

Although the market by named says “fish”, people sold all sorts of things in addition to fish.  Many sold bread, cheese, and various types of meat.  I wondered if I’d see something similar to the wurst man I saw a while back, but I didn’t.

The market even had an indoor beer garden with a live band playing.  It was quite a nice place.  If only we were there early enough.

Driving Home

As I probably should have known, I could not resist the urge to drive.  I ended up taking the wheel for about half an hour and managed to get the Benz up to 200 km/h.  While driving at that speed though, the steering wheel was really shaky.  I felt that if the car ran over a pebble or something like that, the car would just plunge into the side of the road.  If it wasn’t for that, I would have reached the car’s top speed.

Before I started driving though, we stopped at a rest area.  When we took a good look at the back seat of the car and noticed a giant mess of crumbs from all our snacking during the trip.  I don’t think I had any to do with that since I never considered myself to be a messy eater.  Just as we finished commenting about the messiness of the car, one of my friends had apparently stepped on dog poop and got it in the car.  It smelled horrible.  He even got it onto another friend’s pants.  He cleaned it up right away, but a faint smell of the poop lingered in the car for the rest of the journey.  It’s a shame that the car rental company gave us a car smelling like new just so we’d give it back with a bad smell.

In another rest area near Frankfurt, we stopped for a bite to eat and went up to the observation tower there to look at the Frankfurt skyline.  That was a nice sight except for the giant high voltage line that blocked part of the view.  By then we were already pretty much 3/4 of the way home.  I continued reading Band of Brothers on the Kindle and managed to get through about 65% of the book in total.  We got back into Stuttgart at around 7:30 in the evening, returned the car, and went home.

More photos here