[PHOTO] Between City and Ocean

I once made pictures for an article in online magazine, that asked themselves the question: 'where in the city of Rotterdam can we still feel the presence of the harbour?'

Our city holds one of the biggest harbours in the world, used to be the biggest even, and so many people from so many countries find work there. Being a real workers city you can notice the influence of this huge 'employee' in the inner city: for a long time there were no fancy restaurants or fancy galleries, as people simply worked, went to sleep, worked, went to sleep.

Not like they were going to be rich someday, only their bosses could afford that fancy dinner from time to time.

So yeah, even though not immediately visible, I feel the 'harbour' is present in many parts of Rotterdam - although as is happening in so many places around the world gentrification is also pushing these same people out of their city to make room for hipsters and urbanites. Who want, you guessed it, fancy restaurants and expensive art galleries.

So the most important aspect of Rotterdam is becoming less and less visible. The people working in the harbour live in the outskirts of the city, the harbour itself is far far away and can't be reached by public transport, and more and more people who have never even seen this huge part of the city live there now - even coming in bigger and bigger numbers from our over populated capital city.

Which is why, as mentioned in the last post, the new public transport connection towards this beach is extra important. From here you can see some parts of the area that's such a huge 'raison d'être' for our city. The harbour suddenly becomes visible again.

And with sunsets like this I can't even imagine how much more often people will take a shot at making the perfect shot of it as well.