Grote Markt, a main market square in Antwerp, with a view of the
Cathedral of Our Lady, visible in the background.
The square is surrounded by guild halls and the city's town hall.
This is often cited as the tourist destination for Antwerp.
According to folklore, the origin of the city's name comes from a giant named Druon Antigoon, who lived in the area. He would charge a toll for anyone crossing a bridge across the river Scheldt or, if you couldn't pay, would cut your hands and toss them in the river. But Druon was eventually slain by a Roman soldier named Brabo, who cut off the giant's hands and threw them into the river.
Waiting in Antwerp Central,
doing the fusion dance.
Not yet mindful of that story the four of us met Stefaan, a highly educated and cultured young man of high repute in my eyes. We'd exchanged some emails online and he offered to show us around Antwerp, just because he's a great guy.
When he arrived, we exchanged conversation for a bit and immediately got to touring the area. He made plenty of offensive jokes that I won't write here, which were tastefully intermixed with cultural insight and intellectual expository on the city's history, and the history of its buildings.
On the side of the cathedral, these builders were placed because construction never officially ended.
That's right—this cathedral has been under construction for 662 years.
One of the most famous shots of Antwerp—in fact I just saw this on the back of the
Portland International Beerfest booklet.
Stefaan, the Renaissance Man of the day, guided us with acuity and expertise. If he weren't already working someplace nicer, I'd suggest he work as a tour guide, part time. But no, he does it because he likes doing it.
Stefaan in all his overcoat glory. He took us to a few places for some beer, and educated us....
And we sat transfixed at his teachings.
Really though we enjoyed some good drinks, thanks to his expert recommendation.
In a previous blog post, I wrote about meeting some Japanese women at the top of the Belfry of Bruges, where I had the opportunity for a completely organic exchange in Japanese. Well, as we walked around the square near the Cathedral of Our Lady, one hundred miles of train from the Belfry of Bruges, we ran into them again! We had a great conversation for about fifteen minutes.
This time, I got a picture! Disregard the Nguyenning photobomb that went completely undetected.
And we explored the city some more.
Michael, geared up with his nifty flip-flop backpack attachment. That's straight up web gear for you.
About the most legit acoustic bass I've ever seen.
In front of the town hall. Aryan was channeling his Smeagor.
I'm actually quite ashamed of this. Also, sorry Michael. In front of Het Steen
After seeing Het Steen, a little fort on the waterfront, we enjoyed some Belgian mussels (which turned out not to be prepared as our Dutch guides had suspected!) and headed back to enjoy a surprisingly good dinner with our host, Ailean. Out of sheer kindness Ailean was kind enough to allow Michael to stay with us that night, and even call an early-morning taxi for us to ride to Charleroi Airport (not terribly far from Brussels but a proper 90 minutes of mass transit).
At Charleroi, waiting for our two-hour delayed flight (thanks, RyanAir), we made a new friend: Marion! We made small talk and learned about Norway, where she was from.
Michael, trying to work using Charleroi's shoddy wifi.
Finally about to board the plane! Note my displeasure at the long delay.
Marion was a conscript at the time, working for NATO in Belgium, and planned to enter school as soon as her conscription ended. In the meantime, she made the most of her sparse vacation times by traveling all around, to places like Dublin.
As ridiculous as it sounds, after studying Japanese for the last ten years I had still never approached a complete stranger to speak with them in Japanese, without any qualification or introduction, or academically-oriented framing. I've met new people and practiced conversation with people I hadn't met before, I've had conversation partners, and even people very close to me with whom I can practice. But never the "cold conversation," or whatever you want to call it.
Part of the reason, of course, has been nerves. And the true academics out there will probably laugh, but it simply didn't feel right for me to have a stilted, awkward conversation with a stranger. To me, it was illogical and pointless, and even rude, because there was not a truly pragmatic reason to use Japanese other than self-gain. So I'd never done it.
Until today, the 14th of July, 2014.
After climbing to the top of the Belfry of Bruges, with our group of companions, we stopped for a few minutes to enjoy the beautiful view (and the wind). Then three Japanese tourists were at the top of the Belfry of Bruges, taking turns shooting photos of each other, unable to get all of them together. I heard them wishing they could ask someone:
英語やフランス語が話せたらいいのにね。 If only one of us could speak French or English, right?
So I approached them, offered to take their photo, and made a little bit of small talk for a minute before catching up with my friends. Simple stuff: Who we were, where I studied, where they were from, why they came, and no I'm not good at Japanese thanks though seriously no I'm not. (For those of you who don't know, it's pretty common to have your Japanese skills heavily commented on by strangers, especially if you weren't expected to speak Japanese from the get-go.) And then goodbye:
失礼しました。 Pardon my intrusion.
Nope, I didn't get a picture.
It was such a tiny thing. Easy stuff: simple grammar, simple vocabulary. But somehow I felt the beginning of a larger shift. Finally this skill I've been working on since high school has escaped its hermetically-sealed box of academic and become a real thing.
Again, it's not to say I haven't practiced, or even had whole conversations in Japanese. But somehow this felt significant. Like flying after years of practice, with no safety net, and finding out you don't need it any more.
This post is largely irrelevant to the rest of this blog, but I wanted to share here because this trip has given us a lot of personal revelation and change. And this is one way it's affected me. Thanks for reading.
Somewhere amidst our insistent movie quotations and waiting on the train platform, we realized it: we were going to Bruges.
The Provincial Court on the Market Square. Bruges
The city with one of the oldest standing belfrys in the world. With thousands of years of combined history and even a smell that felt timeless, the greened channels and medieval bridges cutting across them bridged the gap between imagination and reality, as another major check on our list was about to be ticked off.
Just hours before we had taken the train to Brussels International Airport to meet our fourth brother, who was finally going to be with us again.
Michael coming out of the BRU arrivals gate.
If you can't guess, that says "Brussels North"
Michael, who we declared as the true gadget wizard among us, didn't let us down when he walked through the arrivals gate wearing an active head camera. He looked like some sort of man of the future. (A man of today?) We exchanged hugs and caught up with each other, and started coordinating with a couple of his Belgian friends who we were to met in Bruges. After that we had gotten our tickets and waited on the train platform.
When the train came its doors hissed opened. After the others got off, we stepped on board and found our seats. It was a one-hour train ride to Bruges, which was the terminus stop.
When we arrived we swam through the crowd of tourists to disembark from the train, where we made our way to the front of Bruges train station.
There we met Ilia and Freya, Michael's two friends from Belgium. Friends he had met online, through a video chatroom which he had been a regular part of for years. Ilia did not hesitate to bust out his Persian jokes with Aryan, and the quiet Freya kept us company with her subtle sense of humor. Both were good company!
Frey on the left, Ilia on the right. In front of the unmarked Bruges train station.
Good enough to compensate
for that lens flare?
So the six of us made our way to the town of Bruges, to explore the city and its beautiful architecture. On my personal list was: climbing the Belfry of Bruges, and seeing the Basilica of the Christ. Whether you believe or not, making pilgrimage to a sacred icon of a major world religion, and the one in which I was raised, held a special significance to me. And of course I wanted to see the top of the Belfry, to prove Colin Farrell wrong: American's aren't too fat to climb it.
On our way, we explored some of the spectacular sights of the town, and took in the architecture and culture of it.
Finally we arrived at our first destination: the Belfry of Bruges. We stood in line, and climbed our way to the top. Didn't think to get pictures of the stairs, which were about an inch wide at their skinniest, tightly winding, and extremely steep.
We passed many a tourist huffing and puffing in a rest area, while we made a hearted (more like winded) effort to get to the top as quickly as possible.
We matched! Mostly. On the way up the few hundred stairs to the top of the belfry.
Only occasionally did we stop in a rest area, to see the inner workings of the belfry's bell mechanism.
Via Michael's GoPro: A giant music box–cylinder controls the bell tolls....
Atop the tower we had a perfect view of the rest of the town, including the channels running through it, and an examiner's-eye view of the others touring the streets, riding the channels, relaxing on a horse-drawn carriage.
View from the top, through the grating.
A thick-wire mesh stopped us from throwing each other from the top, so we were unable to re-create one of our favorite scenes from a particular movie: In Bruges. You know: where one of the main characters falls from the top.
Not that we really planned on doing it.
Pointers to landmarks in the city
Group selfie atop the Belfry. Via Michael's GoPro.
I also had a very unique experience at the top of the belfry, which I wrote about here.
Inside the Basilica.
Our next stop was the Basilica of the Christ, in the nearby square. We made our way there, stopping to rest and converse, before the interested among us entered the basilica to see the blood of Christ. Is it real?
Does it matter?
Inside was quiet, hallowed ground. Whispers seemed not to echo off the grand stained-glass and ornate statues decorating each wall. Those of us there sat down and meditated on the significance of what we were seeing. I deposited a couple Euro to approach the blood of Christ and genuflected before it, staring deep into it.
The priest smiled genuinely and handed me a small pamphlet. To me, the image was sullied by that, if only slightly, by the commodification of this sacred icon.
Yet the significance stood there, unshaking in my mind, as I walked back out to rejoin the others. From there we continued to explore more of the city, walking through Minnewater Park before making way back to the station, for our train ride home.
See the belfry in the background? Yeah, we climbed that. Hence Aryan's eyebrows.
Dapper as usual.
In Minnewater Park.
Back at the town square. I'm not sure.
Michael with two of his good friends, who came to see him and meet us.
Michael stayed behind for work abroad, which he does from his laptop.
That evening, we stopped at a grocery store in order to buy some food ingredients, so that we could cook our host dinner. Ailean seemed to enjoy it, as well as the beer. We sat around the table for hours, exchanging conversation, drink, and a very spontaneous pasta recipe.
We went to bed early by comparison to our regular schedule, so that we could wake up early for our trip to Antwerp the next day. There, we would meet Stefaan, a native Belgian and fellow couch surfer who offered to show us around town. Our time with him would prove especially interesting, with another unique chance encounter not to be forogtten...
Belgium's clever play on their national URL
domain extension. Sadly, be.welcome is
not a real website.
This was what every Belgian would say to us when we told them we were traveling from the US. I wound up asking one of them why that was, and his reply was "I like my country, but there just isn't much to do."
And when it comes to Things To Do, Belgium does in fact sort of fall short. All it has is hundreds of castles to see, the Basilica of the Holy Blood (a Roman Catholic minor basilica), Délirium Café (which holds the record for the most beer offered), the Atomium (which you just have to see, below), Brosella (a fantastic jazz festival), world famous flea markets, and probably the best chocolate shops in the world.
And that's it.
Upon landing we went straight to our host's home in Uccle, just south of Brussels. Aliean Vergean (which we pronounced "Allen") is a 60-something year old nearly-retired scientist who's had a very colorful history, and has a very colorful vocabulary as well. To say the least, we had an interesting experience with him, which I prefer not to publish here.
Our lovely guides, Martina and Melissa.
So let's talk about the exploration!
When I was in Chicago a couple years ago, I met a couple Belgian gals named Melissa and Evelien with whom we explored much of the city. We exchanged contact info and have kept in touch. Evelien was on an excursion, but Melissa and the three of us were able to meet up in Brussels, which was awesome. Melissa brought her two lovely friends, Anna and Martina. Together, the three of them showed us around the city of Brussels...
Just before breakfast near the famous flea-market, of which I did not get a picture.
In front of notable government building X, I'm pretty sure. You don't even care. Look how pretty it is though.
EDIT: It's a church, integrated into a royal building
Whatever this is I found it significant.
Gorgeous plaza in the center of Brussels.
The most legit alley I've ever gone down. Delirium cafe was this way. That's
the bar that has the world-record number of beers available.
A unique and completely not strange statue right next to Delirium cafe.
Wyatt felt mystique overtake him as we entered.
The kind and generous Melissa who led the way around town.
The quiet but entertaining Martina, Melissa's friend from the Czech Republic.
Anna, another of Melissa's friends, who brought with her some very interesting conversation and liveliness...
Which had an impact on Wyatt's ness.
And elicited some thoughtful expressions from Aryan.
No we didn't go in. But what even why did they what is this name for.
One of the zillions of ridiculously gorgeous stone churches.
This one's for you, Mum.
Aryan again tapping into his supa hot fyre, as he gets excited about the trees.
In front of yet another amazing piece of architecture.
Martina and Melissa were so nice to show us around.
Heading down through a gorgeous tunnel, wondering why
I'm taking so long to get that photo.
In one of the many delicious chocolate shops, we found a tiger-size tiger. So did that lady.
One ongoing quest of mine during the trip has been to acquire chocolate from everyplace I visit, for Ayumi. I think it's going to be hard in Ireland—maybe I'll get her whiskey ("Irish chocolate") instead. Pardon my racism. Cough.
As we rode the metro, we started running into some financial problems: Belgian ticket machines don't take some cards! Luckily, Aryan had given his bank some hell, and they wound up assigning a PIN to his card. Then this happened...
Our train took us to the Atonium. Nearby waited Brosella, our next destination. But first we took a look at the structure itself.
Cool reflective sculpture at the base of the Atonium. Taken by Anna.
We had some group photos in front of the Atonium, but honestly
this one's better.
We were, in fact, quite welcome, at the base of the Atonium. It was originally constructed for the world fair in 1958
to be a 165,000,000,000-times magnified iron crystal. Interestingly, it's not made out of iron.
After we had our fill, we moved on to the park to find Brosella. There we did two things. First, we took in that inescapable soul of Jazz, whose enveloping spirit has clung to us like a cologne—we're so used to it that we only remember it's there occasionally, and everyone we run into can tell right away.
Brosella.
Listen to this passage from the fantastic band we heard (apologies about the abrupt cutoff):
Second, we experienced true Belgian weather: utterly unpredictable. Like Portland, the schizophrenic rain comes and goes without warning. Unlike Portland, the rain is almost invariably downpour, and every Belgian carries an umbrella:
Initial view from the Brosella stage. I spy with my little eye, an Aryan and some Belgian guides.
The rain started instantly and the umbrellas whipped out. That gray bit on the ground is a new river, I think.
Another shot by Anna. Trying to brave the downpour. Notice Wyatt's intensity. And mine.
Taking refuge under the stage, after we finally gave up.
The rain let up after a few minutes, and we made our way back to down. First, we stopped at a Mexican restaurant. Also known as the Belgian interpretation of a Mexican restaurant, complete with tigers and Cuban cars.
Enjoying Tacos Del Carne and some good ol' Mexican beer: Corona. Taken by Anna.
Still another one from Anna's camera phone. All of us!
But that's okay. Not like we get it right here in the states.
We found this big red dog on the way out. Like Clifford, but a bulldog.
Finally, we headed back to the middle of the city to watch the world cup final match: Germany versus Argentina.
Hopefully you saw how that game went.
Go Germany! They replayed Mario Götze's shot about 100 times.
Then we went home to Ailean's place, having to hoof it the last couple miles due to the lack of night buses in Brussels. It was a relaxing walk in the safe streets of Belgium.
