A triptych

I am usually surprised shocked disgusted when some well meaning acquaintance tells me I shouldn't visit certain neighborhoods in Rotterdam. On asking for a reason, it usually turns out that these neighborhoods are inhabited by "foreigners" and even worse by "poor foreigners", so I might get mugged or have my expensive new camera stolen. It gets even dichotomous when this advice comes from affluent foreigners who might have lived in these neighborhoods or were just lucky enough to be born in a affluent family. Are people in such neighborhoods more prone to be thieves or any less hard working than my affluent well meaning neighbors? I spent these couple of days and late nights walking through such neighborhoods and I am yet to get roughed up or had my camera stolen.

One such neighborhood is the area along the discontinued Hofplein-Den Haag-Scheveningen train line. This train link was built in 1907-08 by civil engineer Alphonse Constant Godefridus Charles van Hemert. In 1908 the first electric train in The Netherlands ran on this line. In Rotterdam this route passes along the Hofplein viaduct with 189 spans over a total length of 1900 meters. The viaduct was one of the first buildings where large scale reinforced concrete was used. However this route was discontinued in 2006, when the new Metro line "E" connected Rotterdam with Den Hague (The Hague). Now the cycling association in Netherlands is lobbying to turn this into a cycling highway. More (in Dutch).

I made some better photographs today but this took me the longest. I was quite enamored by this triptych but I wanted to picture it with someone walking across the frame. After 10 minutes of wait there was not a single pedestrian, as i was about to walk away a lady came along on a scooter and my blip was complete. Larger is better.