{"id":4262,"date":"2010-04-27T08:30:59","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T06:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/?p=4262"},"modified":"2010-05-31T23:31:08","modified_gmt":"2010-05-31T21:31:08","slug":"rotterdam-tour-de-france-promo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/archives\/4262","title":{"rendered":"Rotterdam Tour de France Promo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tourdefrance\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This year the Tour de France<\/a> will begin in Rotterdam.\u00a0 As I was walking over the Erasmusbrug<\/a> last weekend I saw this on the pavement, all the preparations have begun.\u00a0 The excitement is growing!<\/p>\n

This is a big thing for Rotterdam and while I\u2019m sure the city center will be a nightmare I\u2019m happy that we get the honor this year.\u00a0 This is the fifth time that the Tour de France will begin in the Netherlands, the first time in 1954 in Amsterdam, which was the first time the race started outside the borders of France.<\/p>\n

I love that people all over the world will see our city and maybe stop to think for a moment that there is more to the Netherlands than just Amsterdam.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Today I found this promotional video which shows a lot of the areas here in Rotterdam together with scenes we all see in our day to day lives.\u00a0 This is a cycling society and where better for the Tour de France to begin than in the land of bicycles?\u00a0 Here is a quote from the tour\u2019s page in regards to why the Netherlands has been chosen more frequently than other neighbouring countries:<\/p>\n

A journalist recently asked me why the Netherlands has been favoured compared to the other countries (\u201conly\u201d three starts each for Belgium and Germany, two for Luxembourg, one for Spain and none in Italy, for instance). Besides the geographical location, which gives the organisers every freedom to organise the route in its entirety, a large part of the answer lies in these few lines, written in L\u2019\u00c9quipe in 1954, when the Grande Boucle decided to start outside French borders for the very first time: \u201cAll of the Netherlands seemed to have gathered on the roads of Wassenaar, Delft, Rotterdam\u2026 Tens of thousands of spectators in closed ranks, uninterrupted, for kilometres and kilometres, clapping, cheering for everything that had to do with the Tour, the cyclists, the motorcyclists, the cars that followed or that led\u2026 [In this way] they made a triumph of the first stage!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What they are describing is another thing I love about the Dutch.\u00a0 While they may do so with customer service and other aspects of life, they never do things halfway when it comes to sports and enthusiasm for public events.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s a football match, Queen\u2019s Day, Gay Pride, Carnival, a race or any other event, they are there in droves and their excitement and exuberance is not to be matched.<\/p>\n

Granted, I really hate crowds so I have usually avoided most of these events, but as a part of my getting the hell over it campaign I am going to attempt to brave the crowds for the Tour de France.\u00a0 It all takes place only minutes from my house, I\u2019d be crazy not to.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I find myself complaining about Rotterdam and wishing I lived in a city that was not just full of foreigners but truly expat friendly, like Amsterdam and Den Haag, but that promo video made me swell with pride.\u00a0 Maybe I am a true Rotterdammer at heart and just don\u2019t really know it yet.<\/p>\n

P.S. \u00a0I have just been schooled by my husband that the man in yellow at the end of the video is Joop Zoetemelk<\/a> whom, in his words, was the Dutch Lance Armstrong<\/a> before Lance was even a twinkle in his father’s eye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year the Tour de France will begin in Rotterdam.\u00a0 As I was walking over the Erasmusbrug last weekend I saw this on the pavement, all the preparations have begun.\u00a0 The excitement is growing! This is a big thing for Rotterdam and while I\u2019m sure the city center will be a nightmare I\u2019m happy that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[33,73,530,537],"class_list":["post-4262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-life-in-nl","tag-netherlands","tag-rotterdam","tag-sports","tag-tour-de-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4262"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4265,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4262\/revisions\/4265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}