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March 15 Antwerp was my idea. I tend to get travel fever whenever I venture out of my safe little groove, and I usually want to keep traveling to any and all local attractions. When we were in Edmonton for Preacher's ordination, I became unduly fixated on the idea that we could go to both the Northwest Territories and Drumheller if we just drove long enough. When we were coming back from Chicago and I saw the sign for Indiana, I thought briefly about visiting Chad (good thing we didn't, as I now know how far off the interstate we would've wandered.) For days I'd been looking at the Vertrek maps while we waited for trains and fantasized about the speed train to Paris. In the end, Antwerp was deemed to be a sufficiently exotic locale, and we made up our minds to spend Saturday in Belgium.
As soon as we exited the Central Station, it became obvious that Antwerp was more - well, glitzy - than the Dutch towns we'd already visited. Scherezade, a well-seasoned traveler of the Low Countries, offered the explanation that Antwerp was a Catholic city. She probably had something there. Buildings seemed more monolithic. There seemed to be golden statues on every roof. And the intoxicating aroma of candy filled the city squares. My mother, seizing her chance at topflight junk food, bought waffles at the first stand we came across. The slogan made me laugh: "probably the best since 1950." Nothing like a little well-placed humility, is there?
"Antwerp" apparently means something like "throwing hands." Scherezade claims that she recounted the myth no less than 4 times to my uncomprehending ears, and by the time I was ready to hear the story, she was tired of telling it. So here's the part where I make up local mythology. I think there was a hero and a giant. I think that the hero hacked off the giant's hand as retribution for the giant's misdeeds (which may or may not have had something to do with wanton hand removal. Or selling poor quality chocolate; I'm not clear on this point.) When the hero became revolted with the hand and threw it away from him with a very unheroic cry of disgust, the hand implanted itself in a convenient field, where 100 waffle concessions immediately sprung out of the earth to wreak havoc on the teeth and pocketbooks of - er - the other heroes. Or the dragons. Again, I'm not really sure.
Anyway, the fountain is nice. Even if the hero (for the sake of laziness, we'll call him Mr. Antwerp) seems to be wearing some damnably binding spandex trousers which must have been kinda embarrassing when the giant began to mock the hero's fashion sense. I climbed part-way up the fountain despite my heels. Right near my elbow was the dragon head pictured here. Now, sharp readers may have noticed that there are no mention of dragons in the story I told you. Scherezade claims that the sculptor just wanted to put some dragons in there, and really, who can blame him or her? It's a damn fine dragon.
We visited 2 kathedrals in Antwerp, both of which seemed to be the proud recipients of many of the best items in church yard sales. I think that I enjoyed these visits most because each collection contained a fantastic mixture of useful masterpieces (altar paintings by Rubens; wooden pulpits held up by beautiful allegorical women & a flock of various birds) and the extremely tacky (Virgin & Child statues with hair; bizarre reliquaries; statues full of skulls & cadavers that were too creepy to be goth). As I mentioned, a few of the nicer pieces bore signs of origins in long-vanished church buildings. It must've been a hell of a yardsale. I think that I also liked the fact that Antwerp gave Scherezade & I a chance to wander around chummily & make smart-ass remarks about the statues & tapestries. It was charmingly reminiscent of old times. In the course of our wanderings through the kathedrals I lit 2 candles (though I only paid for 1); sniffed at recently-excavated catacombs; used the font properly and then flicked holy water on Scherezade (claiming that it would clense her kind). She took it in good humour, but still refused to let me photograph her with the wooden chicken. Spoilsport. For our one meal that day, we
ate at a place called (embarrassingly enough) Spaghetti World. We were
about to try a koffyhuis, but at the last minute my mom revolted at
the thought of another day eating broodjes & soupen. Fortunately,
SW wasn't as cheesy as the name might suggest. Far from being an American-style
feel-safe-abroad house of excess, it presented itself as a quiet, slightly
upscale Italian restaurant. I ordered the spinach & mushroom penne
in cream sauce, and was pleasantly surprised when my famished appetite
couldn't do the plate justice. Acting as if I were at home, I asked
for a doggy bag, only to find that I may have been the only person in
the restaurant's history to make that particular request. They cobbled
together a container out of a plastic bowl, tinfoil & a rubber band.
I was sufficiently embarrassed to tip big.
After our lunch-supper, we continued to walk the streets browsing diamonds, Miffy merchandise & little chocolate hands. I was once again grateful for the European custom of shutting everything down at 6 p.m., as my daily jet-lagged stamina rarely stretched beyond 5:15. Unfortunately, we missed the Amsterdam train by mere minutes, so we were forced to sit around the cold drafty station for the better part of an hour. I passed the time smoking Camels (the cool thing to do when you're bored in Europe!), nibbling at my chocolate hands and playing "Photograph the Interesting Stranger" with Scherezade & her digital camera. While talking about my recent weight gain & reflecting on the astounding amount of crap we've been eating during this vacation, the two of us decided to start a collaborate food journal called 't Pannekoeken Huisje. We're still deciding on pseudonyms At home I was finally able to get the Boy on the phone. Yay! Ok, so we've traded email every day, but I truly missed hearing his wonderful laugh in response to my various witty remarks. Tonight I realized that I would be arriving in Canada far in advance of my diligently-written postcards. Sigh. This is always the way for me.
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