Hey folks,
I’m about a week into a tour of the Benelux countries and I have a bit of a funny story for you.
Arrived in Antwerp on a Sunday morning from Bruges. It was cloudy, wet and the city was dead. And, after being in Bruges for a couple days, Antwerp is not exactly inspiring. We were willing to give it a chance though… that is until we got to our hostel. Outside was a little girl with jagged teeth, beating the snot out of a water bottle with a string of plastic sausages, her faithful, mangy mut of a dog lying half dead beside her. It was definate nightmare material.
Inside the hostel things were not any brighter. The owner looked surprised to see us, the place looked dirty and he wouldn’t take a credit card, so we had to fork over our last Euros. We decided to treck over to the cathedral, which was supposed to be beautiful, to see if that could start things off a tad better. Went inside and mass was being held (keeping track of days is tough), so we stepped back outside… and I immediately stepped in a heaping pile of dog business. It was at about that time that I had made up my mind that I would hate Antwerp. We did some sights, but we simply weren’t in the mood, nothing could have cheered us up. We simply went back to the hostel and prepared for a night in (we had to catch a train to Utrecht at 7:00 the next morning, and it was a bit of a hike to the station).
So, I tried to sleep. It was tough, likely becuase of a coffee I had had an hour before. Got even tougher when the Australians in the next room (I assume they had just come in from a flight to Brussells) went down to the bar and suddenly I could hear fiddling. This was not too odd. Antwerp has that obsession with all things Irish. Every cafe has a Guinness sign hanging out front (as much as I like Guinness, this is freakin’ Belgium!) and it has the usual assortment of oddly titled pubs like “The Celtic Ireland”. Anyways, I thought nothing of it, I figured the Aussies had gone down and turned on the music themselves. But it just kept going, fiddle tune after fiddle tune, and it didn’t sound like a cd, because there were pauses and false starts. Curiousity got the better of me and I threw on my sandals and went down in flannel pj bottoms and scummy t-shirt to see what was going on (with the knowledge that my girlfriend would kill me if she woke up and realized I was not getting a good sleep for our early morning). So 12AM in Antwerp and I’m creeping down the deadly stairs to the bar. Sitting in the corner were 7 or so of the owners friends, having just turned up for an improptu session. No one else, the hostel and bar were closed, just a couple, really good, trad musicians together form some tunes. So I went down and sat next to the owner and he smiled apologetically ''Ah, sorry. Usually they not come weekends, but they wanted play…" and he shrugged his soulders. Anyways, until about 1:30 or so I sat there and listened to some really great players from Antwerp (two fiddles, two mandolins, concertina, guitar). It turned my mood around completely and I left Antwerp a happier man (despite the shenanigans of my roomates… another story). Power of the music I suppose.
