We’re on a housesit in a town 30 minutes outside of Antwerp, the second-largest city in Belgium. This is our first time in Belgium and it’s been a great place to visit. I had no idea that this is such an interesting place. I want to share some of our experiences in this wonderful area close to the border with the Netherlands.
First of all, bicycling is an important mode of transportation here. Everyone rides bikes on this mostly flat land. There are Moms and Dads with multiple kid seats on their seriously strong bikes, bike commuters taking the ferry into the cities, and local folks just doing their errands or enjoying the scenery by bike. The streets, sidewalks, and street signs are designed for biking as well as pedestrians and, seemingly lastly, car traffic. People know and follow the rules. Few people wear helmets, though.
Belgium is know for fries, chocolate, beer, and waffles, and those foods are ubiquitous for locals and tourists. However, we have also eaten a lot of seafood, fresh pasta, and wonderful vegetables as well. There are international restaurants as well as vegan/vegetarian. Breakfasts for locals are usually from the bakery, though. We’ve seen lots of kids munching their croissants.
Locals are patient and friendly to us. We are from the USA, but we are invariably approached as if we were locals. Wherever we’ve gone, people address us in Flemish (a Dutch dialect) and we have to explain that we only speak English or Spanish. Usually most everyone switches to English but sometimes we go through an exploratory period of: German? French? There don’t seem to be many tourists in this town but this occurs in the more cosmopolitan Antwerp as well.
Lastly, there is an appreciation for history here. The museums we’ve seen are quite unusual. The building owned by the Red Star Line, a shipping company that carried more than two million immigrant to the USA, Canada, and other countries, is now a museum dedicated to the immigrant’s stories. Another museum presents the story of a multigenerational family dedicated to printing, with original hand-printed books and the machinery developed for the tasks, with an admirable collection of paintings by the painter P.P Ruebens. A third museum contains the objects that individuals hold most dearly and the stories behind them.
This is just our experiences in this one area of Belgium. We’ll be moving on in two days but I will cherish our memories here and return if I can.
