Growing up in Rotterdam

Posted: July 21st, 2003 | Comments Off

“I would like to tell some stories about my youth in Rotterdam, where I was born and where I lived until 1941.

After the Germans bombed Rotterdam, I and my family with me, moved to Bussum and I still live there now. Still, I’m a Rotterdammer at heart. My eldest daughter lives there, so I often visit. The other day she took me for a ride through the city. Oh my, so much has changed! Sometimes I don’t know where I am in Rotterdam. That’s because it’s been such a long time. I still picture the old town.

My husband and I knew all the shops on Hoogstraat by heart, from Oostzeedijk to Korte Hoogstraat. Sometimes we made a game out of it.

I’m glad to say I had a happy childhood and I’m so full of memories of those days that it is impossible to stick to some sort of chronology while I am writing it down. So I’m going to pick one subject and tell all that springs to mind. Then I’ll choose another subject, and so on.”

tbc

{ from “Memories of Old Rotterdam – and other stories” by my grandmother, J. de Boer – van Oosten. Written around 1982/83 at the age of 87. She died at the grand age of 100. }

---