Day 3: Rotterdam, Fruits and Greenhouses

Hi, or as they say in India: Namasté!

At 6 o'clock my alarm went off: half asleep I got ready and cycled to the Parkhotel, where the rest of the group would be. I joined the DVP group again, this time to Rotterdam, the harbour and many related companies. The bus departed at 7:45, towards Rotterdam, across the Erasmusbrug, to the Port of Rotterdam Authority. There we met with Sofie Tolk, a Business Manager Agrofood, who told us about her job and the Port of Rotterdam. After the meeting, we continued our trip with a water taxi, which brought us to the Rotterdam Fruit Wharf. Here we met with Peter van der Laar, who told us about and showed the process of agro-logistics with the shipment of fruit. We heard all about cool storage and when we stood in a cool department for bananas we felt it too. If you ever have to travel trough the Netherlands with a group of foreigners (mostly from countries with a warmer climate), put them in a cool cell for a couple minutes: they will never be happier with the Dutch weather. Another thing I had never realised: if bananas are already yellow, so perfect for consumption, they are thrown away, for when they reach their final destination , they will be overripe: what a waste! Then we went on to lunch at Futureland, where we could view the Maasvlakte 2 area. We could view this even better from the boat trip, which followed lunch. We also visited Demokwekerij Westland, this visit started off with a short presentation on innovative technology and sustainable climate control in greenhouses by Thera Rohling, Strategic Business Developer at Priva. Then Peet van Adrichem, director at Demokwekerij, showed us around in the greenhouses and told about their research and programmes. Finally, we went to Rijk Zwaan, a company that develops vegetable variety and sells the developed seeds. Hans Bouman, a business manager for South-America at Rijk Zwaan, told us about the company and its goals and achievements. The bus driver, who had been the bus driver the entire programme, dropped the group for dinner, where I said goodbye to them: what a great and inspirational group! The bus driver was so kind to drop me near my bike. At 19:50, I was at my family's again and I could finally have dinner, after this long, informative and very exciting day!

During lunch, I learned some great facts about Qatar. Everyone in Western Europe has heard about or maybe even seen horse races, in Qatar this happens with camels. As if this is not shocking enough, there are robot jockeys that ride them! Omar (representative of Qatar) also told me that people with camels will sometimes treat their guests to camel milk or even camel meat (this is not for sale in supermarkets), but the most nutritional milk is donkey's milk, who would have known! some people were also amazed at the lack of mountains in the Netherlands. Rajesh (representative of India) had had some Dutch classes when working for the Dutch Embassy and one of the most confusing things in the Dutch language was the weird pronunciation of numbers. When speaking about 27 hours we say this as 'seven and twenty' instead of the usual in many countries 'twentyseven'. Some others agreed on this: what a confusing language... They had already learned some basic words like "Goedemorgen" en "Prima", which was very funny of course.

I have also realised how lucky I am to be able to participate in such a great, well-organized programme, walking along with all these so called 'high potentials' from all over the world! Tomorrow will probably already be my last day, as there is nothing special for me to do on Friday and I have already made enough hours (considering this day of 13 hours!).