![\"rotterdamview5\"](\"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/rotterdamview5.jpg\" "\\"rotterdamview5\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis is a typical view in Rotterdam.\u00a0 It\u2019s modern, mostly because it was forced to be.\u00a0 Some people love it, others hate it.\u00a0 I guess it depends on your taste and how you feel about everything that has happened here.<\/p>\n
These are photos taken after the city center of Rotterdam was bombed.\u00a0 All the old shops \u2013 gone.\u00a0 The old canal houses \u2013 gone.\u00a0 Everything that made the city of Rotterdam like the rest of the country was blown away.\u00a0\u00a0 You can see the Grote Kerk left standing in the middle of nothing.<\/p>\n This is the same church from another angle today.\u00a0\u00a0 This beautiful old church seems lost in the middle of all the modern architecture.<\/p>\n If you look carefully you can see evidence of the war when walking around the city, especially around the city hall.\u00a0 There are still bullet holes in the building and I remember seeing it first hand in a painting when I did a tour of it a few years ago.<\/p>\n If you look closely you can see one of the bullet holes below the leaves of the tree.\u00a0 This was one of many seen inside the city hall.\u00a0\u00a0 The painting was brought from Greece in 1920 when the city hall was being built and it\u2019s still there today.\u00a0 The day the Nazis entered the city hall they left the building standing but killed everyone inside.<\/p>\n Another example of the differences the war created\u2026<\/p>\n This is Hofplein, in the center of the city, before the war.<\/p>\n This is what it looked like in 1945, after the Nazi strike\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026 and this is what it looks like today.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n