Day Three of My New Life
Part 2 of our Journey in Europe
For those of you who have been following along at home, you’ll know I fell deep in a Belgian DIY Music Rabbit Hole™ before our trip with the intent of seeing a local artist live. Ideally we would have seen Teen Creeps, but they are currently recording their third LP and were not playing any shows. Bummer, sure, but we found some other candidates.
For a while it looked like Hickey Underworld and Fake Indians was going to be the show we saw, but then Stoop Kid announced a small tour with a stop in Mechelen. Mechelen is halfway between Brussels and Antwerp. Everything I had read about Belgium said that Antwerp was a hotbed for local music, so it went on the list. Ghent was a place Adrianne and I both wanted to visit so we now had a plan of attack.
Bruges was on the list as well, but was cut for time and because the attractions were mostly outdoors from what we had heard. Plus, we needed to save some things for our next trip to Belgium. This update will focus on the three days we spent backpacking through Belgium together. This was a part of the trip I was very much looking forward to and it did not disappoint.
You may or may not recall that Belgium is not open seven days a week. This was a holiday week. And Belgium is a Catholic nation. Mechelen was mostly closed for the day, so we were in no hurry to get there. We had a lazy morning, coffee and pastries for breakfast before hopping on the train. No one would fault you for ignorance about the small city, it is home to less than 90,000 Belgians. They speak Dutch primarily, far different from the French that dominates Brussels.
Mechelen is picturesque, charming and dominated by St. Rumbold’s Cathedral.
While most of the shops were closed, the Cathedral in question was not. Very exciting for us. There is a tower view that costs money, but walking the ground floor was free. I didn’t spend as much time in churches or castles as I would have liked on this trip, but the ones we did hit paid off in a big way.
As complicated as my feelings on religions are, I can not deny the awe places like this inspire. Our next trip to Belgium, which hopefully will be two weeks again, I just want to do a Castles and Cathedrals tour. More on that to come.
Walking the town, we stopped in a cute bakery hoping to get some coffee and a baked good. Bakeries, we found, were one of the few places that tended to be cash only. The proprietor was diligent in his efforts, but it wasn’t meant to be. The show we landed on seeing, Stoop Kid, was at Kuub. Adrianne and I decided to check out the venue and figure out the lay of the land. Then we would head back to our hotel room and get ready for the night.
We had a fun dinner at Bar Bao. On our path back to Kuub, we encountered the baker in the street with two baguettes. He offered them to us free of charge, as he did not want them to go to waste. So, now we’re headed to a show in another country with two large loaves of fresh bread. I’m sure we looked ridiculous.
Kuub was very, very cool. Adrianne very much appreciated that everyone sat at tables during the show. I wish I had taken pictures of the venue, but I was just excited to see the band. The bartender quickly sussed out that we were Americans and asked me “¿Hablas español?” to which I replied, “she does.” He laughed and said that it would get him in trouble as he doesn’t actually speak Spanish. I asked if he spoke English and got a very common refrain of “Of Course.” I sometimes felt foolish asking, but figured it was the polite thing to do. Maybe I was being an ignorant American.
If so, most everyone was a forgiving sort. In fact, everyone we met in Belgium was very friendly. Welcoming and kind. I had heard that people there tended to be standoffish, but that wasn’t really our experience. Another point in Kuub’s favor is their board game collection, which the barkeep showed off proudly and gave us this handy list in case we wanted to play any of them.
That’s a pretty solid collection, especially for a bar setting. Earplugs were readily available had we forgotten them, but the sound mix was such that it would have been easy to listen without them and not leave with ringing ears. Adrianne said the whole experience was far superior to many of the shows she had attended in the US and I can definitely see the appeal. Also, for a band with a relatively small following the show was well attended. The audience was focused and supportive. The band sounded great as well.
Stoop Kid had just put our their new record Mount Cope. We had managed to listen to it a decent amount the day before so were both familiar with the majority of the set. My recording is a little tinny, I apologize, but here is “Cold Tiles Bad, Warm Breeze Good” from said record.
I also managed to pick up a copy of their first record “Camp Careful” on vinyl. Unfortunately, they did not have copies of the new record yet. I met Kristof, a Mechelen resident who A) has been to Fest, B) was in a band called I believe “Witch Hunt” but I couldn’t make out the name and C) was very tied into the local scene. He could not, however, offer me a good suggestion for a record store to pick up any Teen Creeps records. A sad day indeed.
I also met the band after the show. I think I was probably a little overwhelming for them, I get it. But, I did uncover that Jens also has been to Fest and spent a decade in the band Coma Commander. Stoop Kid appeals to me more, but I can definitely see the similarities with other Fest bands. Plus they have a song that is about “The Karate Kid,” that wins a lot of points for me. I also found out that Jens books in Diest, where they are from, and we had many friends in common including Signals Midwest and Oso Oso. The punk world is very small, even internationally.
Another idiosyncrasy that I found appealing was that all the songs were in English and all the banter was in Dutch or French. The show was pass the hat style, which we were able to intuit from our years of going to DIY shows. I just tacked on a little extra to the cost of the record because we are classist chumps that don’t carry Euros.
We were still a little hungry on our way home and I’m a sucker for fast food in other countries so we stopped at a Burger King thinking that if McDonald’s had veg options, BK certainly would. They did not disappoint.
One other really cool thing, the hotel Adrianne had booked was in a former church. Safe to say, we loved Mechelen. I don’t know that I could recommend it for someone looking to do touristy things, but if you want to experience Belgium, I would say it scratched the itch far more than Brussels or…
Antwerp. We got up the next morning and headed to Antwerp. As soon as we stepped off the train, we knew, this city was not for us. I called Antwerp the colonialism capitalism capital of the world. Diamonds and Chocolate! Exploited from Africa or the Americas. Listen, I knew there was a shady colonial history that gets buried under the bigger players in Europe, but it was on full display in Antwerp. Money made from ruining countless lives and all I could think was what a shopkeeper had said to us in Brussels, “Nothing is made in Belgium.”
I think we spent about 4 hours total in Antwerp and that majority of that was spent at a coffeeshop and Chocolate Nation, the chocolate equivalent of the World of Coke. I am not really a fan of these types of places, but Adrianne wanted to check it out. I have a long history of harshing her mellow on things like this, so I made a pointed effort to be a good husband because this is her vacation and she deserves to do what she wants.
In full disclosure, I’m still working on it. This trip, I think we got it right. We’ve found a better balance in meeting both of our needs and wants. We also found a better appreciation for each other and strengthened our marriage. Travel has long been a tricky spot as we both love it, but we have different approaches and I can be vocal about things I don’t want to do. That vocalization has been known to dampen my wife’s excitement in a manner that is unfair nor the desired outcome.
Back to Chocolate Nation! The tour walks you through Belgium’s sketchy history with the chocolate trade and touches very lightly on the dark side of the industry. The guided tour was informative and engaging enough, but could have done more to educate on the realities of chocolate harvesting. There was also some propaganda about how the industry is leading to a better life for the people farming the crops. Let’s just say I felt a white washing over me.
The tour ended with a tasting room, where we got to sample various different chocolates like gold chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate and dark chocolate. We also got to experience Ruby chocolate, which is the newest form of chocolate on the market. Has that word lost its meaning yet? “RO-AD”
We walked around the city a little more and decided unanimously to head to Ghent early. We were both excited to get there and neither had anything in Antwerp that stood out as a must see. I’m probably being unfair to the city and am open to another visit with a more focused itinerary. It felt a lot like Brussels, only richer. That might not be accurate either, feelings aren’t facts after all. And I do know that Antwerp was the #1 place I was recommended to see shows so I suspect there is more to the city than we saw in an admittedly short amount of time.
I was going to include Ghent on this post, but this is already a very long entry and I have probably an entire post worth on Ghent alone. Did we love it? Did we hate it? Was Mechelen the highlight of our trip? Find out next post on Powerbait’s Year Off! Before you go, here’s a few other pictures of Antwerp.
