Today was a short day, but it was still packed with activity. The day began with a walk to the seven-floor office building housing DakAkker, an entirely green, 1,000 square meter rooftop garden. In the lobby, we met with our tour guide, and we turned right around to see the surrounding areas before stepping onto the rooftop. We began by walking to a local church and school that features grooves and pits in the ground to store rainwater for public use. Right next to these buildings were wooden letters that spelled out “ZOHO” (an acronym for the area’s name), which actually function as water storage, connected to a pipe fed by specialized curved roof tiles on surrounding buildings. We learned that there is a computer inside the letters that communicates with local weather computers to get warnings and drains as needed. We then walked into our tour guide’s neighborhood, Heliport, which featured even more sustainable water innovations, such as slanted bricks along the road that led to a sinkhole in the central playground. I hadn’t realized prior to the tour just how much water sustainability was present in this city! We then walked atop the old train station, which has been repurposed as a garden featuring communal fruit trees, bearing apples, cherries, and more.
The tour ended with a rendezvous back to the initial office building, where we trekked up seven flights of stairs to finally see the DakAkker. We were first led to the smaller portion of the garden, featuring small bushes and herbs, and were then led to the much larger back portion of the rooftop garden. This section featured thousands of gorgeous flowers (my favorite was a single light-blue one), a cherry tree, a chicken coop with five chickens in it, social bees pollinating each of the flora, and compost bins. The compost bins produced liquid fertilizer, quite literally called “Rotterdam Watershit.”
Once we left the DakAkker, Brian took us for (his first) tour through Rotterdam, giving us insights on the city’s history. We began across the street from the city hall, where we learned about how Rotterdam was bombed in 1940, leaving only a handful of buildings standing. The almost city-wide destruction is why most of the buildings in Rotterdam look much more modern than you’d expect. We walked past the construction site for a new EDGE building; EDGE is a company that strives to build better, carbon-neutral/negative buildings. We wandered through the city streets, looking at the Cube Apartments, the various ports, what was once the tallest tower in Europe (10 floors), and ended up at the Markthal.
The Markthal is one of the largest venues for small vendors of cultural dishes and specialty products. Inside the Markthal, we all split up into groups to look through the hundreds of ethnic food stands. Bryce, John, and I decided to try a Surinamese place, and I got a chicken skewer rice dish; it was INCREDIBLE. After eating, we continued to wander around the Markthal, looking at sausage, cheese, and candy stores, receiving delicious free samples at each. Shortly after, we met up with the professors, and they paid for fresh stroopwafels for each of us; I didn’t realize until this point that I hadn’t consumed a fresh stroopwafel for the entire trip before then. Even if we didn’t spend much time on scheduled activities, I feel that we were definitely able to immerse ourselves in the Dutch culture through its food features.
