SUNDAY IN ANTWERPEN - AUGUST 7, 2005

There are three cities we want to visit while we are staying here in Holland, Antwerpen, Gent and Brugge. Sunday seemed like a good time to begin and I argued for Antwerpen since it is the largest of the three and traffic during the week would likely be the worst. This turned out to be a really wise decision. The ring road around Antwerpen is a construction site for at least half of its length with the consequence that there are no exits into the city. It nearly drove our poor navigator crazy, but there was nothing we could do but plough on and on and on. Finally we came to an exit but by then our system seemed really confused, or they have changed a lot of the streets recently. At any rate it took us quite a while to get anywhere near the city center. Luckily parking was no problem at the northern edge of the town where we eventually landed. When we saw water we decided to park the car and hoof it. It turned out that we were about 20 minutes from the center, which was fine.

                                                                              

                                                                              

This is the old "meat house" where animals were slaughtered and prepared. The white layers in the brickwork are called the fat layers.

                                                                            

                                                                            

                                                                            

Arriving at the town square the first thing we noticed was that everything was decorated and a stage and chairs were set up for some kind of festival.

                                                                              
The town hall all decked out

                                                                              

                                                                               

We had a look around the square, which is much nicer than I expected. Actually I had no expectations of Antwerpen and was pleasantly surprised. It’s really a nice looking town and at least on the Sunday we were there a very lively one too.

                                                                              

The market square

                                                                            

                                                                              
We went to the tourist information center and booked a walking tour – “historische wandeling” – for later and went off in search of some lunch. After a light lunch we decided to walk to the train station, which is on the other side of the town and is one of the major sights. On the way there we got to see many of the main shopping streets and squares, which was good because our tour later took us in a different direction. Sunday is a good day for tourists because a lot of the shops are open, at least most of the ones that tourists would be interested in, not the big department stores.

                                                                              

                                                                              
The train station

                                                                            

                                                                              
It took us almost half an hour to walk to the train station (According to the map it’s a little over a kilometre from the town hall) and it seemed a bit strange to be going to have a look at it, because train stations aren’t usually tourist attractions. Leipzig is the only one that immediately comes to mind. However, it was worth the walk. From a distance it looks like a church or mosque and inside the impression is even stronger that this is some kind of holy place. I think probably its builders considered it a shrine to the new industrial age. The area is also known for its diamond shops, which were of course open but we weren’t in the mood for diamond shopping, and its very large population of Orthodox Jews (one of the largest Jewish centers in Europe), of whom we saw a few.

Walking back to the information center to begin our tour, we ran into a delightful parade. The festival turned out to be held by the town’s guilds and they were all on parade in their uniforms and with bands and floats.

                                                                              

                                                                              

I'm not sure which guild is represented here.
                                                                              

I know one little girl will probably never forget the day as she sat on top of a huge sea serpent that had something to do with Neptune and squirted water right and left at the crowds. She shrieked with delight when everyone ran for cover.

                                                                              

                                                                              
Note the look of extreme concentration. She's aiming carefully.

                                                                              
We finally made it to our meeting place, a little late but the square was packed with people and we weren’t the latest ones. I was expecting a group of German tourists, but it turned out that in our group of nine we were the only ones who didn’t speak Flemish. No problem though for Leo our guide. He very competently gave the tour in both languages and in fact it was fun, because if he started with Flemish I could see how much of it I could understand – maybe 30 – 40% - and of course when he began with German I could follow most of what he said in Flemish. We also learned that Dutch and Flemish are practically the same language, although no one likes to admit it.

                                                                            

                                                                              

These are some of the old guild houses on the market square.

                                                                              
So for the next two hours through sun and rain (We were the only ones without an umbrella – what does that tell us about the weather here?) we followed Leo and looked, listened and learned. Or at least we heard, because he told us so much that I only remember some of it. It’s the second largest port in Europe, one of the world’s most important diamond centers (half of the world’s diamonds are cut here), a fashion metropolis. And of course, the legend of where the name Antwerpen comes from. Way back when, there was a giant who cut off the hands of any sailors who wanted to sail into the River Schelde without paying him. Along came our hero, Silvius Brabo, who proceeded to cut off the giant’s hand and throw it into the river. Thus Ant = Hant (hand) and werpen (throw).

                                                                                                                

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                

The Cathedral

                                                                                                                

                                                                                                      

                                                                                                               
Antwerpen has a beautiful gothic cathedral and a wonderful 12th century castle called Het Steen (the stone).

                                                                            

                                                                            

It looks almost too perfect to be real.

                                                                            

                                                                              
The only thing we didn’t manage to see that we would have liked to was the Rubens House, where he lived and worked, but time ran out on us. Frank said something about returning to visit it, but I don’t think so – see above about getting into the city. On a weekday it’s probably ten times worse.

One little tidbit of information that I remember from our tour is that the whole northern part of the town beyond St. Paul’s Church used to be the red light district but that it has been reduced to just three streets. And somehow we managed to walk through two of them on our way back to our car. The first thing I noticed was that there were a lot of men walking around and no women and then I looked at the shop windows. It was early yet, around six o’clock, so a lot of them were empty, but quite a few displayed women in skimpy clothes and come-on looks. Many of them were quite attractive and at least they were out of the cold wind. I did feel a little uncomfortable walking by but the only indication we saw was a sign prohibiting children from walking through. I wasn't brave enough to take any pictures.

The trip out of the city was even worse than the trip in because our navigator didn’t understand that the entrances to the ring road were blocked and we had no idea how to get back on it. It also started pouring rain, which didn’t help us. Eventually we managed by changing the setting on the navigator to shortest distance from quickest distance, which meant it didn’t feel it had to take us via the Autobahn.

We enjoyed our day in Antwerpen but it was enough for now. Sometime in the future if we happen to be there again we’ll have a look at some of the museums, but for now the barricades will keep us from returning.