One Weekend, Two Port Cities – Port 2

I was sent to Hamburg for work and, due to labour strife and confusion with my Hamburger friends, I couldn’t stay for the weekend. Instead I returned to the Dorf and boarded another bus to a second port city. In this the second port of two blog posts, I write and ramble about our trip to Antwerp.

Our Lady of Antwerp

Antwerp

What pops into your head when you think of Belgium? Beer. Okay, that was easy. But what else? Waffles? Fries? Jean-Claude Van Damme?

Sadly, fries and waffles do not require a secret recipe or a local ingredient. Van Damme is, well, that's a blog post on its own. Is Belgium really that blah? Is it really just about starchy foods and washed out action dudes living off the irony of their washed-ness?

No. Belgium has Antwerp. You know, that city where diamonds come from. Amsterdam's less well known little brother. The biggest city in Flanders, you know? "Flanders Fields, where the poppies grow..." That one? The place where they don't speak French and they don't quite speak Dutch either.  

You can be forgiven for not knowing much about Antwerp, I didn't until a colleague mentioned what a cool place it was. Antwerp? "Yeah, it's a cool town. Better than Brussels. Don't go there. Brussels is a hole."

With a long weekend approaching and no couch to crash on in Hamburg after the ADC, we decided to get onto a bus to see what all the fuss is about in Antwerp. And give Brussels a wide berth in the process.

An unexpected surprise

If you wanted to be anywhere in Medieval Europe (if you don't mind lack of hygiene and a high risk of disease, dismemberment, and/or death) Antwerp was the place to be. It was an international port, filled with merchants and artists and thinkers and beer. Its fortune was built on wool, and, to this day, it's still a cool fashion and design city. 

It was also a hub of religious violence. It was sacked by the Spanish during the Eighty Years War. There were street fights and looting during the Reformation. It had a 'Great Fire' and was blocked from the sea (the city's livelihood) for centuries, then showered with V2 missiles during the troubles in the 40s.

They didn't give up on it. They always moved back. They rebuilt what was destroyed. They maintained what wasn't destroyed. They brewed beer. They kept on going, and today Antwerp surprised me – it's a fun, cool city with a great vibe.

The old town, like the old town in most Western European cities is touristy, but a 10-minute walk in any direction (except towards the river) takes you to a cool neighbourhood. It might be a student hood or the hipster corner of town where streets are lined with antique shops filled with knick knacks. On our first day we even chanced upon a food truck market. 

Culture, Motherf**kers!

I mentioned artists earlier. Some of my favourites put brush to canvas around here: Bruegel, Bosch, those guys. Needless to say, I didn't need a few beers to get excited about checking out the Fine Arts Museum. That excitement evaporated when I learned it's closed for renovations until 2018! 

Rather than sticking the collection into a basement somewhere until 2018, the museum has spread its masterpieces around. There was a Bruegel Land somewhere in the countryside, which I hope didn't look like this:

So, instead of anger-drinking beer on patios and binge-eating fries out of sadness, we managed to see some of the great altar paintings. They were put on display in Antwerp's cathedral, so for an easy six euros we saw a beautiful gothic church and some Flemish masters.

Beer your beery beers, beers.

I might have been a little too hard on Belgium earlier on. They make good beer. And a lot of it. They also age the stuff. They stick bottles into basements and forget about them for a few decades. At one place, Kata ordered a fruit beer that was almost as old as her. They have delicious darks and awesome ales. Most of the wheat beers are palatable enough that you don't need to stick tropical fruit into them.

We were also lucky. We visited on one of those rare weekends in northwestern Europe where it was sunny. Naturally with weather that good in a beer country, we hit the patios. Who has ever told you they got a tan in Flanders? I can! But that was two weeks ago, so it's gone now.

Many of us have a bucket list of places we'd like to visit. Antwerp never rated as a place on my list, but it has earned a spot on my list of places worthy of a second visit.

Kata's fruit beer from 1987. It tasted as bad as that sounds.

Going to the Toilet Disco, complete with a DJ.

Artsy Antwerp and its street art.

A photo of the photo taker.

So long, Antwerp. See you again soon!

If you go:

Drink beer and eat Flemish food at Bille's Beer Kafeteria. There are plenty of great beers, which can be a little overwhelming. But overwhelming is good, because you just ask the staff for advice, they are nice, attentive and all-knowing about the Belgian beers. The bar's mascot is a French Bulldog, who is not as nearly as nice and attentive as the staff unless you're sharing your Flemish rabbit stew.