Next Time I'll Pack My Galoshes

According to google image search, Antwerp looks something like this:

Looks nice, doesn't it? Blue skies, beautiful buildings, people outside enjoying the sunshine.

False advertising, I say.

We had one free day during our time in Belgium, so some of us took a day trip to Antwerp. Our experience was more something like this:

 (disregard the fact that this is an image from a Texas tropical storm- a google image search of "torrential downpour" didn't yield anything dramatic enough)

After missing the train that the boys were on (when the alarm went off I told myself "5 more minutes" for about an hour) and running through the streets of Brussels to catch the next train, I was already soaked. Gergely had borrowed my umbrella earlier in the week and I hoped he had it with him in Antwerp.

Antwerp is only about 45 minutes from Belgium, and I was really excited to go because I heard they had a beautiful cathedral and large collection of paintings by the Flemish Primitives (who am I to pass up a good triptych?). The city seemed even more promising within the dry comfort of the train station, which is absolutely gorgeous. The women at the tourist office were really nice and helpful. They gave me three different maps and directions to the museum and the cathedral.

As soon as I stepped outside to go find the boys, though, the day lost its promise. It was not only raining hard and relentlessly, but it was also freezing. There were deep and unavoidable puddles everywhere and wind that somehow seemed to come from the ground up, blowing the rain and puddles into my face. I'm not sure that I've ever seen weather this miserable.

So I ducked into the first interesting building I could find, which happened to be the Diamond Museum. I went through the exhibits with the audio guide, which was informative but really long, and learned about the chemical composition, mining, and trade of diamonds (Antwerp is the Diamond Trade capital- more than half of all diamonds pass through here, which is why the city is wealthy enough to have a train station like that). There were plenty of pieces of jewelry on display that made my eyes light up and caused an "Ooooh pretty!" or two to escape me, like this peacock brooch:

 

But of course, noticeably absent was any mention of the violence and exploitation surrounding the diamond trade in Africa (there was one little blurb that said, "Diamond mining used to be dangerous."). Some things you just can't put a positive spin on.

After the Diamond Museum I decided to go meet up with the others and somehow ran into them in a subway station. They had apparently tried to get directions from the women at the tourist office, who both spoke great English, but were themselves unable to form coherent questions (instead of asking for a restaurant that served hamburgers, one of them gestured with his hands and said, "Bun, meat, bun!"). They had no idea where they were going and had apparently spent the last two hours at a place called "Boston Steak House." Luckily I had 3 maps.

The rest of the day was spent in the cathedral and the museum, running from awning to awning with our heads down to avoid the needles of rain (turns out Gergely forgot the umbrella). So I've included a picture of 4 of the 5 (George was the photographer) of us as we waited to get on a tram. Unlike in Austria the tram didn't smell like ham, but like a mixture of wet dog and gummy bears. I prefer ham.

As a result, I don't know what the buildings and streets of Antwerp look like. I did snap this one picture of the cathedral as we ran away, though, and this one of some windows in the interior.
  


The museum didn't have as large a collection as I expected but was warm and dry. Plus, we saw some great paintings, like this one by Jan van Eyck.

Despite the weather it was a fun day. We didn't stay any longer than necessary, though, because we all had boots, coats, and pants to go home and dry (my boots aren't tie-dyed, they're soaked). Consider yourselves all forewarned that February is monsoon season in Belgium.