All This Beauty!

In the ultimate case of the juxtaposition of two disparate images, here I am writing this post while listening to Euphoric Trance and drinking a rather delightful cup of Twinings Earl Grey. I also used the words juxtaposition and disparate in the same sentence. I can tell this is going to be a great post.

Central Station

Having left the joy-filled environs of The Hague, I made my way to the next destination on my itinerary: Antwerp, Belgium.

The original plan was to go to Brussels, but having been warned off it by some fellow international students who described it as dirty and uninteresting, I redirected to Antwerp, a city which I knew next to nothing about.

It turns out that it is a large diamond trading centre (50%-80% of the world's rough diamonds are traded here) and also the fashion capital of Belgium. One of Belgium's finest exports in this respect, Dries van Noten, has a flagship store in the fashion district. It has the second largest port in Europe and the surrounding docklands have a massive concentration of petro-chemical industries and four nuclear power plants. This last point was included for individuals of my ilk who find such inane details incredibly interesting.

The hostel I stayed at was called ABHostel which was in a converted chocolate factory and was privately owned. It was out of the city centre, in the "real" Antwerp. The owner was super lovely, and the hostel itself really nice. It was quite small in terms of capacity which made it more intimate. My particular favourite feature was the beer vending machine. The owner gave me one really good tip: DON'T do as the tourists do and buy chocolate from the boutiques in the centre of town. These are essentially tourist traps. Just do as the Belgians do, and buy it from the supermarket. I did so and got me some damn fine chocolate for 60 Euro cents from a supermarket one block away. In town, that same thing would probably have cost me a few Euros.

I only had one full day here, so I did a small amount of exploring and visited a few places, a couple of which will be explored in some detail:

Diamond District

This area is all around the Antwerp Central Station, which is a magnificent structure I must say. All marble and gilt (read: opulent and gorgeous). There were so many diamond/jewellery shops it wasn't funny. I saw some seriously nice pieces though. I also went down the Diamond Street where all the diamonds are traded behind closed doors and if you are lucky you might see a man handcuffed to a briefcase making a beeline for a particular building. Four of the world's 28 Diamond Banks are in this area, as are quite a number of Hassidic Jews who represent the old school in diamond trading. More recently Indians and Arabs have moved into the trade.

Fashion Museum

Being the home of one of the more prestigious design schools in Europe, it was decided at some point to open a fashion museum in the Fashion District of Antwerp. The exhibition changes every six months, and when I went it was all about knitwear through the ages. There were some really nice bits dating back a few hundred years and others that were only made in the last couple of years. In one area they had a display of Japanese, British, French and Italian knitwear. It was intriguing to see the differences between these four countries and how they approach knitwear.

Sculptural Knitwear

The French designs had simple silhouettes that pushed the boundaries through the use of colour and pattern while retaining cultural references to things like country life. The British designs went further by exploring the limits of the knitwear fabric itself, blurring the line between function and art. The Japanese designs were clearly based on the Kimono and modern interpretations of this cultural icon. The Italian designs were a combination of tasteful design and outrageous experiments in colour and pattern.

It only cost me 1 Euro to visit because in Belgium if you are a youth (which has an arbitrary upper age limit of 24-26 years old) you can get steeply discounted admission rates to quite a few places. I thought this stop was totally worth it!

Modern Art Museum

Modern Art that I can understand

I left this one more bewildered than when I entered. I will say this about modern art: done well, it is thought-provoking and interesting; done poorly it is crass and self-indulgent. I saw plenty of the latter at this museum. Mind you, I got the youth rate for admission so it isn't as though I paid lots only to be disappointed.

Alas, as I only had one full day in Antwerp, I didn't have time to visit an apparently superior museum which had only been open a few weeks that was down towards the docklands called MAS. Someone at the hostel went to it and raved about it. I'll have to save that one for next time...


All in all, I found Antwerp to be a nice stop, with nice architecture in the older part of town, and I would like to go back if only to explore it in a bit more detail.