A Very Short Trip to Antwerp

I don’t know that I’d have picked Antwerp as a destination were it not for the generous invitation of Di and her Belgian. Ryan Air is annoying but undeniably cheap and what am I doing in Austria that’s so important? Nothing. I booked a ticket and drove myself to the airport. Anything I have to say about the city is about the city only – I’ve got nothing but hearts and flowers for Di and her Belgian.

The old center of Antwerp is very attractive with cobblestoned streets and tall skinny guild houses in fancy Flemish style. But sadly, the charm of the city fades as you wander away from the center. It’s interesting, to be sure and it’s wildly cosmopolitan compared with any of our Austrian cities but Antwerp appears to be in the grip of a renovation/destruction frenzy – it’s hard to tell which. The tramways are being jackhammered at every third intersection. There’s a certain dinginess to the place that may come from the pollution or the aging of the city, it’s hard to know. The sun rises and sets in a blaze of orange that’s caused by all the exhaust in the air – Antwerp is a shipping center for some crazy percentage of Europe’s freight and trucks circle the city nonstop making a noise that sounds like the tide.

If Antwerp isn’t really pretty in a touristy sort of way, it is really real. And it’s interesting. A walk through the city’s diamond district reveals nothing to see for windowshoppers or sightseers, but if you have an eye for odd environments, it’s something. A fiftyish man with a big beard, a yarmulke, knickers and stockings, and an odd shiny jacket strolled in to the neighborhood, looking both authoritarian and comic. The heart of the diamond exchange is a plaza where a bunch of guys stand around in groups of three of four talking in hushed tones. They’re almost all Indians and Chassidic Jews, though here and there a stylish woman strides through in high heels or a bulky security guard stands scowling in a doorway. It’s an insider scene all the way and instead of being glam, it’s kind of seedy and weird.

A few blocks away from the diamond exchange is the Jewish neighborhood. We ducked in to Hoffi’s, a charming place to have lunch and a primo spot for people watching. The kosher menu is okay, I wouldn’t call it spectacular, but the back of the dining room had decorations up and a reed mat ceiling – Hoffi’s nod towards Sukkot – and the folks that work there are friendly. A young Chassid with the demeanor of an old man and a woman who must have been his mom sat across from us, a big table of boisterous Israelis had a feast, in the back room a smaller family – including a woman in a festive turquoise hat – dined and talked on cell phones.

Di and I wandered the city without any particular plan or destination. We went through the old downtown, the graffiti park, the shopping mall (as a shortcut) down to the river… then we stopped in at The Eleventh Commandment for a beer. The goal was to have raspberry beer but they were out – I had the cherry instead. I liked the taste quite a bit, but it didn’t sit well and I had to walk away from most of it, a three euro tragedy.

I love supermarkets in foreign countries – they are the ultimate in cultural wonders. We stopped in to get some fish so I could cook Fish Wednesday, Belgium Edition and were flabbergasted in the meat department. Belgians eat horse, you can buy elaborately prepped baby pheasant, and the organ meat offerings were beyond anything I’ve seen in the west, ever. They’re certainly economic, these Belgians.

On the second morning we went for a short walk through Di’s neighborhood before I had to jump on the train back to Brussels and the airport. Di’s neighborhood has lots of postwar housing, big blocky numbers without much greenbelt. I suspect the apartments are nice enough on the inside – her place has big windows and a vast balcony. But I think of going for a walk around the ‘hood like I do in Seattle – even downtown – on nice days when I’m feeling like a wander. I can’t picture it. (I couldn’t picture it in Vienna either, for the record.)

On the train back to the airport, I looked out the window at more urban decay mixed with reconstruction. I made vast mental generalizations about Northern Europe, which I should not do. On a funny-to-me aside on generalizations and stereotyping, I learned from a local that the Dutch and the Belgians don’t like to be mistaken for each other. Supposedly, Belgians are kind of stupid and the Dutch are terrible cheapskates. Whatever. None of the Belgians I interacted with were stupid at all. And I can’t say for the Dutch because I am too stupid to tell them from the Belgians.

I believe in the value of first impressions and I did not love Antwerp (though I certainly adored my hosts). This isn’t to say I wouldn’t go back there – I’d go in an instant to hang out with Di again and there are other places to visit — I hear Leuven is very pretty.

The draw to a place is the people, of course, though there’s something to be said for setting. The alps looked very attractive on the drive home – but I ask them this: Are you a substitute for the good company in Antwerp?

There are a handful of pictures here.