Today we took a tour of the Port of Rotterdam on a boat called the Spido. While beautiful and very relaxing this trip was also very educational. I find it really neat that multiple languages are nothing here, most individuals speak at least 2 to 3 languages on average, and the fact that the whole city caters to that is amazing. While on the boat we had an audio tour guide that would give us back ground knowledge and history of the boats and buildings we were passing in the in most common languages. Starting with dutch, then german, then english. With Rotterdam known as the second largest city in The Netherlands it makes since that the Rotterdam ports are a major international exporting city that holds such rich history. I learned that the area where the exporting is done is also a shipment repair area as well. The ship yard fam brick is the maintence and repair dock, there are tons of TEU which stands for twenty foot equlivant unit that are held in Rotterdams shipment area; and there are more than 16 million freight ferry services that transport cargo though various places throughout Europe. The SCA transforest is the subsidiary that owns the Interforest terminal Rotterdam, being established in 1967, the Interforest terminal Rotterdam handles forest products and other specialzed cargo from bulk carriers.Covering three major business area's the Interforest terminal Rotterdam breaksdown its orgainzation throughout: Interforest Terminals, Transforest Shipping, and Transforest IT and Logistics. To sum everything up we also learned about the surrounding building we were passing such as the STC group building. The STC is known as a global leader throughout a number of industries and also plays a major role in the shipping port and logistics. The building has a uniques shape that has been formed into a piece of Rotterdams chess set that you can see people playing throughout the city. And lastly we discovered the city of windmills that travels all the way through Switzerland, known for its old distillery and they also say that it is older than the city of Rotterdam it self. Very imformative right.
-Stephanie
