Markus and Brian's Excellent European Adventure

Picture Imperfect

Finally found an Internet cafe that would allow me to upload photos; too bad we had to travel to Antwerp to find it! (Pictures down below.) Na, I'm just pulling your collective leg: We decided to leave Brussels with a plan to return later, as the city has relatively few sites of interest during the week (especially when it rains every day of our trip so far), and we'd like to return on Saturday to finish our tour and visit the Fuse nightclub (apparently one of Europe's best electronica clubs, and like most serious clubs in Europe the party doesn't end until 7-freakin'-AM the next day).

Antwerp, on the other hand, is hailed in the guidebooks as an oft-overlooked destination; it's a little drab and boring during the day, but at night it's reputed to have one of the best nightlifes around. We arrived this morning, and after checking out the Grote Markt and the very expansive and historical Our Lady Cathedral (the oldest and largest Gothic church in the Lower Countries, according to the brochure), we headed down to the shop-laden Kammenstraat street to visit Fish & Chips.

Fish & Chips is something of a pheonomenon, we gather; it's a massive, multi-storied clubbing / rave / punk clothing, shoe, and accessory store. The staff is so hip and experimental in their fashion it hurts, there's a bar and internet access upstairs, there's a rack devoted to grafitti spray cans, and the best part -- the best part -- is that there's a hole in the ground on the entrance level that leads to the lower level via an enclosed red tube slide. Like, from a playground. It's so damn cool. You emerge into a white, glowing tunnel you can stand up in, and enter back into the actual store from several side openings. Mr. Maltby, you'd love this place.

Anyway, we went there to get the scene on stuff happening tonight, and the extremely helpful staff basically told us in a very lengthy way that there's nothing really going on tonight, though there are some hangouts that are pretty decent any day of the week. We've got a personalized hand-drawn map, to boot.

Oh, something very amusing about Belgium is that they're not very timid when it comes to sexuality in advertisements. Seeing scantily-clad women on TV or on posters is rather common. What's even better is that they tend to use sex to sell everything: We saw a poster with an upper-body shot of a topless woman (cut just high enough so that nothing was too visible) holding a package of batteries and smiling. Smiling, as if to say 'These long-life, durable batteries make me want to get naked!' Another poster showed a woman, from behind, taking off her top, facing a smug, smarmy guy holding a cellphone, implying that as the new owner of the Nokia Sexamaphone, woman will be powerless to resist ravishing you -- on the streets, no less.

Well, I think I'll get to the pictures now. The software seems broken -- again -- so I'll just post things manually and slowly for now. I'll put each of them up with 3 on each row, and then a caption legend down below. It's been very rainy for the past 4 days we've been here, and I have yet to learn most of the camera's settings, so the pictures may be a little drab for now...

Amsterdam
1) Us with Molly and Catherine (see post from a few days ago). Great people. What they don't know is that we took their wallets during this shot.
2) Tiny little side streets zig and zag off main roads in Amsterdam
3) Bridges like this are commonplace in Amsterdam -- imagine a drop of water creating ripples in a pond. That drop of water is Centraal Station, and many canals spread outwards from the station in concentric circles. Then, roads all lead in straight lines towards the station, hence creating a billion bridges like this one. It's veddy cool.
4) We stumbled across this movie shoot
5) This is the "Before" shot. I'd show you the "After" shot, but I still don't know where he is now.
6) The Dutch love their bikes. There are even bikes in a multi-level parking garage, on the left.

Brussels
7) Brussels. Filled with lots of suits, as the capital of the EU.
8) Some people in Brussels just can't slow down.
9) Old architecture meets modern traffic.
10) Markus, the friendly traveller, has just finished telling an old woman to let him drink in public in peace. (He's a raging boozer, remember?)
11) Actually, he was watching this girl.
12) From Grand Place, a large building in silhouette.
13) Some of the statues carved into the side of said building, many meters high in the air.
14) Side view of said building. Bonus: Another building too!
15) Another majestic building. Man they're getting old. (Yes, Markus, your type of humour has competition!)
16) Heil statue!
17) This photo comes a few minutes after the girl on the left arrived. Before that, the girl in the center holding the flower was surrounded by a hoard of boys all hurtin' and courtin' to win her heart. One boy was in the way, though, and by the time I finally got my surreptitious shot I think she noticed me...
18) Markus finally wanders back in a stupor from Amsterdam...
19) Our hostel, the Van Gogh. Easily one of the nicest places we'll stay in on our trip, I'm sure.

Antwerp
20) A shot from Grote Markt. I think the lady at the bottom is yelling "No pictures, you insolent Canadian twerp!" (I kind of forgot what she said when she punched me in the nose.)
21) Fish & Chips, as described above. Oh, and a clothing store with an interesting name.

That's it for now. See ya.

Posted by Brian at May 22, 2003 10:34 PM