The ship made two stops today. During breakfast, we docked in Dordrecht, where the port was busy with boats coming and going: cargo barges, tugs, "waterbuses" like the one shown here at the left, and all manner of other craft.Wednesday, 29 March, Rotterdam: Dordrecht and greenhouses
Written 24 April 2023
The ship made two stops today. During breakfast, we docked in Dordrecht, where the port was busy with boats coming and going: cargo barges, tugs, "waterbuses" like the one shown here at the left, and all manner of other craft.
Promptly at 9 am, we left the ship for our walking tour of historic Dordrecht. The weather was still cold and rainy, but we were greeted by cheering sights like this little pot of grape hyacinths on someone's doorstep.
We started at the "wine harbor," where the city originated. Today, Dordrecht has a population of 180,000. It has had "city rights" for 800 years, and 800 years ago, it was a trading village with a population of about 800 people. Its golden age was earlier than Amsterdam's, taking place in the 14th century, when they traded in wood from Scandinavia, sugar from the colonies, grain, and of course wine.
Directly across from the mouth of the wine harbor is the River Noord, which goes to Rotterdam; to the left is the River Merweda, which leads to the North Sea; and to the right is the Maas (Meuse), which goes to Maastrict and eventually to France. The golden age may be over, but this river confluence is still the busiest river crossing in Europe; 150,000 ships pass by here every year.
In its heyday, the city had a wall pierced by a number of gates. The one shown here from the inside (left) and the outside (right) was the principal gate, through which important people came and went. The red coat of arms with the white stripe in the middle is that the the city. The gate's arch is 14th century, even though the date says 1640. The tower at the top is 1692.
Above the coat of arms is the the bust of a stern-looking dignitary; the guide assured us that it's just a sort of generalized portrayal of a Roman, intended to lend gravitas to the decor.
On the outside, the city virgin (also called the "city maiden"; every city seems to have one) sits in the center in the middle of the outside façade, balancing the city coat of arms on her knee and holding a palm frond to symbolize the desire for peace. She is sitting in a basket, showing that the city likes things peaceful but protected, and she is surrounded by coats of arms of cities she was regular trading partners with (or what are now laughingly called her Facebook friends).
Our guide stopped us at the intersection shown in these two photos to show us an old photo (which I photographed from his notebook) of the scene after the storm of February 1953, which caused widespread—and in areas south and west of here, catastrophic—damage. The photo at the right shows the same intersection the day we were there, a little over 70 years later. I'll write much more about that storm in the 11 April entry of this diary.
We were using our "Quietvox" devices, of course—the system that lets the guide speak in a normal conversational tone of voice to a large group and lets all members of the group hear the words directly in their ears, without having to cling close to the guide or disturb others with a shouted commentaryu. A passing group of small school children looked at us curiously, and one of our fellow passengers, clearly a well-practiced grandpa, took his earpiece out and, under the supervision of the teacher, held it down so the children could listen. Much hilarity ensued, and they seemed enthralled with the concept. I wouldn't be surprised if a few future sound engineers were recruited that day!
Across the river was another of those medieval-looking former water towers. This one is now apparently a hotel with a restaurant on top.
Our guide explained that the characteristic small-paned, closely spaced windows of the narrow gray building in the right-hand photo indicate that it was a sugar warehouse (now a private residence, I think.
The brick house with the red shutters just struck me as a particularly handsome specimen. The street sign on its façade reads "Kuipershaven," meaning "coopers' harbor"; the canal it faces was the barrel-makers' harbor, using some of that wood from Scandinavia. It's now a pleasure-boat harbor and shelters some impressive yachts.
The square tower in the distance in the right-hand photo is the church; we never got that far on our walk. It was originally intended to be twice as high, culminating in a tall spire, but by the time they'd built it that high and installed the clocks, it was already beginning to tilt on the soft peat soil, so they just shored it up and left it that size.
The metal beams photobombing my shot of the red brick house are part of the lever mechanism for raising the drawbridge I was standing on when I took the left-hand photo. It was designed by the city architect, a Mr. Itz, and built in 1854. Like most of these small drawbridges, it was originally hand-operated by burly guys hauling on ropes and chains, but today it's electric.
Beyond it, on the far side, is what the guide described as the most expensive residential real estate in the city—a row of modern brick buildings on the peninula between two long, narrow harbors, handy to the yacht harbor. Among the city's current industries are production of machine parts for shipping and yacht building.
The Pieter Boele is a historic ship; only historic ships are moored along this little stretch. It was probably originally a sailing ship, but you can see from the smokestack that it was later refitted for steam. According to its website you can rent it for excursions for up to 50 people.
Nearby, at No. 9 Wolwevershaven ("wool weaver's harbor), is the Trip house, once the largest private residence in the city, now a museum. Its staircase is apparently a popular venue for wedding photos, and from its (a href"https://dordtspatriciershuis.nl/english/">https://dordtspatriciershuis.nl/english/)website you can see models of the interior, including the amazing room built out over the river on the back side
As we strolled along the harbor, we came to this guy hard at work on the bottom end of a truly ginormous wooden mast (left). I tried, but I couldn't get the whole piece of solid wood into the frame. The photo at the right is about the best I could do. I guess I'm glad there are still trees like that to be found in the world, but too bad they cut it down! With luck the yacht builders of the world have the sense to cultivate such trees so as to ensure a future supply.
At the left here is a series of houses that are (or at least were) the trading centers for various companies, countries, and regions. From left to right, Heineken Brewers, the Rhine, and the Elbe. One that I didn't get a very good photo of is "Stockholm House," which the city apparently almost gave to the Swedish goverment to encourage trade and investment in Dordrecht. Before that, it was a grainery.
The rococo house in the right-hand photo is known as the mermaid house, for the white stucco mermaids acting as carytids on its façade.
At the left here is just a little concrete and iron fence that caught my eye (not, fortunately, literally). This house (or shop) holder apoarently does not wish to share his wooden bench with the public.
Our guide had already told us that when she's not guiding she's an artist, a painter. The painting in the right-hand photo is by a well-known Dordrecht artist whose trademark is to combine scenes of the ships of the golden age of sail with backgrounds of city's modern skyline. The one show here is not even my favorite—it's just the one I got the best photo of through the window. Our guide's studio is upstairs, on the top floor of this building.
The structure shown at the left, which was pointed out to us across a canal, is the former fish market—covered, but not entirely enclosed. It is now, of course, a restaurant.
In the courtyard of another restaurant we walked by was this striking mural. The guide stopped to explain that people from Dordrecht are called "sheep heads" because of a historical incident in which two guys tried to smuggle a sheep into the city without paying tax by dressing it in clothes and walking it upright between them. I assume the attempt was unsuccessful, since everybody knows about it. Once we knew the story, we spotted more and more references to sheep scattered here and there.
The city hall, its steps flanked by two stone (or perhaps concrete) lions, dates from 1385 but has mostly been rebuilt. The part visible in the left-hand photo dates from about 1853.
At the right, where a canal passes under part of the building and the one next to it, is original, from the 14th century.
Nowadays, this building is used only for elections, official meetings, weddings, and things like that. All the administrative work takes place in a modern building out on the edge of town.
The back of the city hall (which we saw at a later stage in our walk) includes more of the original 14th century stone work.
At the left here is another sheep reference. I'm not sure, but I think it's an ad for a bar.
And on a section of blank wall that we spotted from one of the many bridges over the many canals (and a small river that runs through town), was this wonderful mural entitled "De Grachtwacht" ("the canal watch"), a fabulous pun on Rembrandt's famous "De Nachtwacht"! The persons protrayed are five favorite sons of Dordrecht: Johan and Cornelis de Witt, Ary Scheffer, Aelbert Cuyp, and Ferdinand Bol. The de Witt brothers were lynched in 1742 by supporters of the royal family for being whatever the opposite was (republicans, maybe?), two among about 10 political murders in Dutch history. Ary Scheffer was a 19th century romantic painter, Aelbert Cuyp I mentioned above, and Ferdinand Bol was a 17th century painter and student of Rembrandt.
Toward the end of the tour of our guide told us that Viking said she should take us to a local café for a rest and a beverage. I'm afraid I didn't get a photo of the front of the one she chose, so I don't know the name, but here's a shot of the interior. "Leffe" is a beer.
At the right is the handsome (and delicious!) mug of hot chocolate I was served.
The house at the left here is called the "beaver house," because it was built by a mayor named "beaver." Note how the wrought-iron bolts on the bottom floor spell out the date it was built: 1556.
The somewhat more grandiose house right next door, shown here at the right, was built for that mayor's son.
And finally, the guide particularly pointed out the house shown at the left (next to the mayor's son's house), which I think she said is the oldest stone house in the town. Its façade is noteworthy as an example of early prefabrication! The stone front was quarried in slabs, and the decorative carving was done right at the quarry. Then the three or four big pieces were shipped by water, assembled into the façade you see here, and tacked to the front of the house with the decorative wrought-iron bolts!
Finally, as we made our way back to the ship, I spotted this wonderful Art Nouveau window on the front of an art gallery.
Other things we learned on the tour:
Our 2.5-hour tour was over at 11:45 am, and as soon as we were all back on board, the ship cast off and headed for Rotterdam.
Written 26 April 2023
At least once on every Viking river cruise, they serve a special meal entitled "A Taste of [whatever country you're in]," and this was "A Taste of Holland" day for lunch. When the Program Director described it the evening before, he had me at "langoustines" (when he continued with "oysters," I was thrilled).
When we sat down, the table was already set with plates of cheese wedges, cold cuts, and three kinds of smoked fish—eel, trout, and mackerel—all scrumptious! But the rest of the meal was served buffet style, so I went back many times, sampling different items. At the left here is one of the promised langoustines (Nephrops norvegicus, Dublin Bay prawns) and a few mussels. As I suspected would be the case, the langoutines were not numerous, but I still managed to score a couple. At the right, a pair of oysters on the half shell (small wooden shoes as table ornament in the background).
The corner of the buffet table shown here at the left was for cold seafood. That's my partially filled plate at the left. Counterclockwise from that, a dish of cold mixed seafood salad, a bowl of large cold scallops (quartered), the dish of langoustines, a dish of cold cooked octopus pieces, and a dish of bite-size pieces of crispy veggie spring rolls. Behind those, big bowls of potato salad with green beans in it and of mixed green salad.
Farther along, platters of cheese wedges and cold cuts. Also small dishes of things to add to the salad, like croutons, pickle chunks, and sunflower seeds.
Around the next corner (the buffet was four-sided, with chefs in the middle slicing and replenishing things) were platters of breads, sweet and savory, apple pastries (up on the wooden block), cream-filled cake, glasses of fruit-garnished chocolate pudding, and sliced fruit. Again, that's my plate with oysters on it in the foreground (you can just see the edge of the oyster platter at the right-hand edge of the photo.
Then came more platters of sliced fruit, culminating in this half melon porcupined all over with fruit skewers to be dipped into the chocolate fountain. In front a big bowl of stewed cherries, and at the right empty bowls and dishes of sauces and toppings for the ice cream they brought out a little later.
Then around a couple more corners to the hot stations. The chef whose back you see behind the fruit skewers was stirring pots of beef stew, lamb stew, and "vegetable stampot," which was pumpkin, potatoes, and other veggies stewed together until they fell apart into a coarse purée. As you moved past him, you came to the carving station, shown here at the left, where another cook was slicing roast beef, roast chicken, and a large flat pastry stuffed with salmon and spinach. Behind that, you can see large cylindrical meat pies.
After that was this array of half a dozen ceramic dishes containing whole veggie spring rolls, Indonesian stir-fried noodles (sort of like fried rice but with noodles instead), and two kinds of meat balls, actual meatballs, as opposed to croquets, one spherical and the other cylindrical. I'm told you normally eat the cylindrical ones on a bun with lots of mayo.
I passed up most of the desserts in favor of the "appelflappen" they brought out hot from the kitchen, with vanilla sauce. Its just what it looks like—a cross-sectional slice of a cored apple, dippled in fritter batter and fried. It was good, but one thing Viking kitchens have a serious problem with is serving things advertised as "crisp" while they are actually still crisp. The apple fritter wasn't."
Near the end of the meal, as we approached Rotterdam harbor, we passed "Johan's Ark," a replica of Noah's Ark built by a Dutch contractor, carpenter, and ceationist at a cost of ca. 1 million euros and opened to the public in 2012. You can make out the life-size model giraffe standing in the bow. It houses some other model animals inside. It actually floats (on a metal hull concealed below the water line) and is towed around the rivers and canals of the Netherlands (and occasionally even overseas, although it isn't really seaworthy). He couldn't get gopherwood, so it's made of American cedar and pine. It's four storys tall and very wide.
About 1:30 pm, the ship docked in Rotterdam, and at 2 pm, we were off on our excursion entitled "Dutch Innovation and Greenhouse Agriculture." Here are some things we learned on the way to our destination in Nootdorp:
And here, at the left, are the sort of greenhouses we toured. They are big!
The facility we visited was that of Harry Wubben Flowers, which trades under the name "Funny Santini." The folks there grow chrysanthemum for sale, retail and wholesale, as cut flowers. Every harvest day, they ship a bazillion flower stems (600,000/week) off to one of the big auction houses, and to maximize reliability, they have their own trucks. (Smaller operations contract with one of several trucking companies that operate in the region, picking up flowers and taking them on to the auction houses.)
That adds up to 30,000,000 stems a year. They have 50 suppliers, 700 customers (of which 50 are direct); their sales are split about 50-50 between direct sales and auction sales. They've been in business since 1989 and, at 60,000 square meters of greenhouse space, are just over average size. Check out the Harry Wubben website at https://www.funnysantini.nl/
Mums come in four size classes: the big single blooms used mostly by florists; medium-sized flowers that you might grow in your garden and that have several blooms per stem; santinis, which are maybe an inch or an inch and a half in diameter and come about 12–15 per stem; and tiny madibas, about 25–30 per stem. Harry Wubben grows santinis exclusively.
At the left here are large sections of plants at the vegetative stage, and at the right, a section ready for harvest. At the right-hand edge of the right-hand photo, you can see a recently harvested section, and you can just barely make out a long conveyor belt stretching off into the distance to the right of the remaining narrow strip of yellow and white blooms, about which more below.
On what our guide called the "fast side," they grow six eight-week flowering cycles per year; on the "slow side," five 10-week rounds. Because mums are "short day" plants—that is, they are triggered to bloom when the days grow short in the fall—the growers use black-out curtains strategically deployed to make the plants think they're getting shorter days than they really are, so blooming can be triggered on the grower's schedule, and all the plants in a section bloom simultaneously. When the days are too short, they close the blackout curtains (to avoid light pollution and annoying the neighbors) and turn on lights inside.
At the left here is a flowering stem ready for harvest (see the firm's website for photos of all the colors and shapes they grow). The photo is kind of small, but you may be able to make out (a) the grid of wires that is gradually raised as the plants grow, keeping them neatly upright and separate, and (b) the dusting of what looks like sawdust on the leaves, about which more below.
But at the right is how the plants start out. These crates of rooted cuttings were shipped to the Netherlands from Africa by one of two companies that supply them to Harry Wubben (Dekker, in this case, as the crates show). That company just grows a mum plant, clips off the top sprout, and plants it in a little cube of compressed peat (actually, machines do the actual planting). The mum plant then sends out side shoots, which are in turn clipped off and stuck into peat cubes for rooting. I don't know how long the process can continue in practice, but theoretically, the same mum plant can go on producing more and more side shoots (several for each one clipped off, all perfectly uniform and genetically identical) indefinitely. Dekker harvests and roots 200 million a year and ships them north.
At the left here is the machine that takes those rooted cuttings, little peat cubes and all, and plants them in a neat grid in the greenhouse. It was working way off in the distance when we arrived, but I got this shot when it came back toward the concrete path to pick up a new load of crates, having emptied the ones it carried. One guy rides it as it works, handing it new crates as it empties them and making sure nothing jams. They vary the density at which they plant depending on light levels, so in summer they plant more densely than in winter.
At the right is the cutter used as harvest time. In the photo, it's standing up edgewise, with its clippers in the air. For use, it is laid down flat and creeps long, under the wire grid, clipping the plants off near their bases. The person doing the harvesting can adjust its speed to match his own, but I'll bet they're pretty fast. As the stems are cut, the harvester plucks them out of the wire grid and lays them on the conveyer belt, which moves them continuously back toward the cement walkway.
At the walkway, they make a right-angle turn onto the belt shown at the left, which, a little farther along, dives through a hatch and continues traveling underground, until it pops back up in the packing room. As they harvest different sections, they move the belts accordingly and open and close the hatches to accommodate them.
To the left of the conveyor in the left-hand photo, you can see a section of curtain that has been deployed in preparation for some sort of light manipulation.
At the left here, the conveyor belt (empty just now) arrives from the greenhouse and disappears into the machinery used in packing the flowers for shipment. They're bundled into groups of five, trimmed to a precise length, then five groups of five form a kilo bundle.
Then they go into bins like those in the right-hand photo before going off to their respective buyers or auction houses in the afternoon, to be sold at 7 am the next morning. Next to the packing station is a rack of half a dozen bicycles that employees use to get around inside the vast greenhouses.
The flower auctions must be a sight to behold. As each lot comes up for sale, a count-down auction clock starts at a maximum price (determined by the auctioneer) and counts down to zero in less than a second! Buyers, both there in person and logged in over the internet from all over the world, sit poised with buttons in their hands, ready to click at the price they are willing to pay. If the clock gets to the bottom and nobody clicks, a "no sale" is declared and the flowers are destroyed. When a buyer clicks, he then gets to decide now many flowers he will buy at that price. Fifteen clocks run simultaneously, so that's 15 transactions a second every business day. Originally, buyers showed up in person to look at the flowers before the auction started; now, they get to see only photos of each lot and some basic info about it (weight, etc.). There's even a preauction "click to buy now" option (sort of like the one on eBay).
The mums last 2 to 3 weeks from cutting. Some of Harry Wubben's customers buy just once a year, others daily. Prices are already under discussion for Mother's Day 2024.
But this tour was billed as featuring Dutch innovation in not just greenhouse, but green, agriculture. Currently in the Netherlands, nitrogen pollution is a major problem, and the government wants to close down about 50% of farms because of all the nitrogen they contribute, so growers of all kinds are working hard to reduce not just their carbon footprints but their nitrogen effluents as well, and this company is very proud of its efforts, emphasizing "people, planet, and profit," in that order.
Pests are always a problem in greenhouse agriculture; I think the guide mentioned thrips and spidermites. Therefore, they employ a professional pest spotter, a lady who comes in two or three times a week and rides the "airobike" pictured at the left. It is rolled to the section to be examined, suspended from the overhead framework, and allows her to sit in the red seat and propel herself back and forth, the length of the greenhouse bay, inches above the growing plants. She inspects each section, and if she spots a problem, she deploys the biological control agent they keep on hand for the purpose. The guide said that it's an insect, not a ladybug, but he couldn't tell us what it was. It, or perhaps its eggs, or even spores if it isn't an insect, come in big bags on what looks like sawdust.
The "airobug" machine shown in the right-hand photo was invented here at Harry Wubben and is used to distribute that sawdust. The pest spotter fills the performated cups with the mixture, and a fan blows it everywhere she points it. That's the little flecks all over the flowering plants shown above.
According to the guide, most of the energy they use is for lighting, and a recent conversion from sodium lighting to LED has cut that bill by 35%. The fixtures they use now can supply different light for different purposes. Far-red is good for making the plants grow tall, and apparently orange light is optimal for some life stages, but working under those lighting conditions is very disturbing to humans, so they switch on the white lights when somebody has to work in the greenhouses.
During the summer, they usually use natural light, but when they get extra electricity for free (by selling power back to the grid), they turn on the lights even then.
Exhaust fumes from their machinery supplies extra CO2 for the plants, and they even pipe in a little extra sometimes.
They capture 4000 cubic meters of rain water from the roofs and use that for irrigation, adding fertilizer as necessary. The mums are planted in soil on the floors of the greenhouses, but that soil is not open to the ground below. Below the soil is a sealed floor that enables them to recapture irrigation water that runs off. Because it already contains fertilizer, and especially nitrogen, they can test it to determine how much, then add less fertiler before reusing it (saving three to four thousands pounds of fertilizer a year).
A problem with reusing the the soil cycle after cycle is accumulation of nematodes, so they steam-sterilize the soil as needed, usually annually. It costs 150,000 euros in gas and labor each time, but it avoids the use of chemicals, and customers increasingly demand that. Between the biocontrol organisms and the steam sterilization, they have no need for chemical pesticides or, e.g., neonicotenoids.
I was pretty impressed with the whole operation. I see a lot of santinis in the mixed hand bouquets for sale in my supermarket and at Costco, some closely resembling the ones shown on the Harry Wubben website, but I'm told that the US gets most of its cut flowers from Colombia rather than the Netherlands
Back in the buses headed for the ship, the guide pointed out the glass building shown at the left—it's the European patent office.
We also passed greenhouses labeled for orchids, "fresh exotics" (maybe the protea blooms I've seen in flower arrangements locally), and asparagus. The guide said they also grow grapes in in greenhouses around here; very high quality, expensive, and few get exported. This area had perfect soil for vegetables. Farmers started building little dikes to protect them from the wind. That evolved into open, and finally closed, greenhouses.
I didn't get a good photo of the new principal fish market, but it's in a building that looks like a ship.
The first storks are back from Africa; the guide pointed one out to us, the only one we saw this trip. We also looped around the zoo, getting glimpses of pelicans and flamingos. The guide remarked that all the city buses in Rotterdam are electric.
Back in Rotterdam proper, the arrow-shaped building shown at the right is the new central train station, nicknamed, of course, "the arrow."
At the right here is the Old White House, an Art Nouveau landmark built in 1898. It was Europe's first skyscraper, at 10 stories. It rests on 1000 piles and is one of the few buildings in Rotterdam to survive the bombing in WWII. It now says "Calex" in big letters across the top, but I don't know what that means.
At the right is a photo taken from the ship during the evening scenic cruise. I don't know what the buildings are, but they illustrate the city's resolutely modern architecture.
I was delighted, on getting back to the ship, that the bow camera is finally up and working.
At dinner, I ordered all three courses from the "regional specialties" menu, starting with matjes herring. The herring was good, as were the egg quarter and the salmon caviar, but I didn't much care or the circles of pumpernickel bread. It turned up several times on the cruise, and I kept trying it and finding it not worth eating.
David started with the Genovese minestrone with basil pesto.
I continued with the crispy roast pork with creamed cabbage and bread dumplings. All very good.
David had the herb-crusted ahi tuna steak.
We both ended with the "tompoes," a vanilla Napoleon with red berry coulis. It had a good flavor, and all the right elements, but once again, it was soft all the way through. The pastry did not retain a hint of crispness.
I've found that you have to check the cookie selection at the coffee station both morning and afternoon if you don't want to miss anything, because their restocked, sometimes with different selections. Unfortunately , they're often pedestrian choices like chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin, and not always made on board. They fed us well, so I was not tempted.
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