Last week I popped over to The Netherlands to visit colleagues, tackle a few ideas, and do another one of those odd touristic things that I seem to find, in this case visit the Euro-bridges.
The 5€ facade on the Bridges of the Eurozone.
Hello 10€ Bridge!
Back when the Euro was being developed, there was a conscious decision to not feature any real places on the banknotes – so each one of the seven bank notes (5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500) have a distinctive style (and color) – with the backside featuring a bridge in that architectural style.
The fictional objects were chosen so that no single Euro area country could stake a claim to the money – and it remained true until a few years ago.
Dutch, English, and… is that Japanese?
Here’s the 20€ facade.
At that point the city of Spijkenisse, an outlying suburb of Rotterdam, started developing a neighborhood that would need some bridges – and they hired somebody to turn fiction into reality.
Once I realized that the bridges existed and that Spijkenisse is, in fact, close to Rotterdam, it became my touristic activity for the trip to Rotterdam.
50€ Bridge. I bet it cost more than that to build it….
50€ hosts the information….
Thankfully one of my colleagues has a car because the area in question is probably a good 20-minute walk from the nearest Metro station, which itself is probably a 30-40 minute ride from the city center – this might be a developing neighborhood in a public transportation friendly country, but it’s not exactly on the beaten path.
100€ Note Bridge.
200€ – never seen one of the notes in person, but I have crossed the bridge.
There are, alas, only six bridges: one structure has the 5 façade on one side and the 20 façade on the other.
Naturally I hung out on the bridge that reflects my self-worth within the family of Euronotes.
Purple is my favorite bridge.