GETTING TO ANTWERP FROM BRUSSELS

The Amsterdam-bound Eurostar from London doesn’t stop at Antwerp (though I wish it did) but there are three to four trains every hour from Bruxelles-Midi (aka Brussel Zuid). The journey normally takes about 45 minutes to an hour, but be sure not to catch an S train, which stops EVERYWHERE and takes forever. The station before Antwerpen Centraal is Antwerpen-Berchem; don’t get off there, but it’s only a few minutes away from Centraal so a good prompt to get ready to disembark.

If you’re spending time in Brussels, it’s best to get as far away from Bruxelles-Midi as possible because it’s a shithole – dirty, unsafe, unwelcoming, inadequately policed – and a national disgrace considering it’s many visitors’ first glimpse of Belgium. If you’re spending the night in Brussels, stay in the more congenial town centre (Ibis, Motel One, EasyHotel etc) and get a train to Antwerp the next day from Bruxelles-Centrale.

LANGUAGE

DO NOT SPEAK FRENCH. No one speaks French in Flanders. On the other hand, most Antwerpians speak near-perfect English and will jump at the chance to show off their excellent English skills, though I think it’s polite to learn at least a few Dutch words. For example:

hallo = hello

goede dag = good day (the “g” in Flemish-Dutch is pronounced like the Scottish “ch” in loch; “oe” is pronounced “oo” – hence Paul Verhoeven is pronounced Paul Verhooven)

dag (informal) = hello or goodbye.

goedenavond = good evening (the “v” is pronounced like “f”)

fijne avond = have a good evening (I say this when leaving)

alsublieft = please (literally “if you please”, best memorised as three segments, als-u-blieft)

dankuwel = thank you. This is easy. Dank u wel.

sorry = sorry. This is also easy, though I’m not sure it’s quite as versatile for Dutch-speaking Belgians as it is for native English speakers, for whom it can mean anything from “hello” to “excuse me, can you help me” to “sorry” to “it’s my fault” to “it’s your fault” to “fuck you”.

SECURITY

I feel pretty secure in Antwerp, even late at night, but it’s best not to loiter in louche areas. I live a few minutes south of the station, and even coming back from Brussels late at night it feels ok. It probably helps that I live in the Jewish quartier, which means there’s usually at least one police car hanging around to keep an eye on things.

Antwerp, like Rotterdam, is one of the drug capitals of Western Europe. I’m always reading local news items about drug dealers shooting each other or blowing up each other’s front doors, but so far this hasn’t had any impact on me or anyone I know, and is unlikely to affect you unless you go looking for drugs or trouble, or loiter in dodgy-looking areas late at night. Of course, it would help if they legalised cannabis, but I can’t see any politician here advocating for that. Politically, Antwerp is Centre-Right, but moving further right all the time, apart from my part of town, Borgerhout, which tends to vote “Marxist”.

TRANSPORT

The worst thing about Antwerp is the traffic. Cars have priority nearly everywhere; you sometimes have to wait FOREVER to cross the bloody road, and then they give pedestrians 30 seconds to sprint across like Usain Bolt. It’s no wonder Belgians love their cars; the government gives them all sorts of tax breaks and rebates. The Car Lobby hires thugs to disrupt Traffic Calming meetings, and Antwerp public transport is abysmal, particularly in the evenings; long waits, random cancellations, escalators on the metro permanently out of order; overcrowding etc. You’re better off walking or cycling – you can rent bikes and the cycle lane network isn’t bad, though cyclists and scooterists assume they have a God-given right to ride on the pavement, even when there’s a cycle lane a few feet away. Be alert; car drivers, especially, forget pedestrians exist and can’t be bothered with boring stuff like looking in their rear-view mirrors.

The metro station at Antwerpen Station is called Diamant (not Antwerpen Centraal or anything sensible like that) and is directly accessible from within the station.

If you’re going to use trams or buses, you can buy a 10-Rittenkaart from De Lijn shop in Antwerpen Centraal station (and use it for more than one person). https://visit.antwerpen.be/en/info/public-transport This link will show you where you can buy tickets online. I don’t think trams and buses take cash any more; you might be able to pay contactless with a debit or credit card on the machine on the vehicle, but I’m not sure which cards they accept.

OPENING HOURS

Shops are not open on Sundays (apart from the first Sunday in the month), and most don’t stay open beyond 6pm. A lot of places (bars and museums included) close on Mondays.

SUPERMARKETS

If you think the food in British supermarkets is expensive, wait until you see the prices in Belgian ones! Cheese and fresh fruit are priced like luxury items. They usually stay open until 8pm (sometimes 9pm on Fridays?)

Albert Heijn: Dutch chain, own brand items are reasonably priced, opens Sundays. There is a branch on Groenplaats (closes at 8pm), and a newish branch right opposite Amsterdam Centraal (Pelikaanstraat 4) which stays open until 9pm every night! The only supermarket in Antwerp that does, AFAIK. You don’t get Albert Heijn in French-speaking areas (ie most of Brussels) because they can’t be bothered to print up bilingual labels.

Carrefour: French chain, stays open on Sundays. There’s a good branch at Beddenstraat 2, under the Grand Bazar mall next to Groeneplaats, but I’m not sure how much longer this will last as the whole block is about to be redeveloped.

Delhaize: Belgian chain, doesn’t open Sundays, seems expensive to me, but there’s a useful branch in the basement at Meir 78. Above it, in the same Stadsfeestzaal building, is a brilliant Asian supermarket called Amazing Oriental, which is open on Sundays.

Jumbo: Dutch chain, small but useful, own-brand products are reasonably priced (Operaplein/Teniersplaats 5) open on Sundays.

HOTELS

I once stayed in Ibis Centrum (Meistraat 39) during a heatwave, and it’s fine, very central and convenient, though, as always with Ibis hotels, if you want tea or coffee in your room you’ll need a travel kettle. (Sometimes, but not always, Ibis hotels have them if you ask at reception.)

I haven’t stayed in Ibis Budget Antwerpen Centraal (Lange Kievistraat 145), but it’s cheaper and only a few minutes’ walk from the south exit (no 5) from the railway station; at first sight it might look like a dodgy area, but I live just down the road and it’s not. Be sure to ask for a room away from the side where there is a luxury block of flats being built, though Ibis hotels usually have pretty good sound insulation.

I stayed in Holiday Inn Express Antwerp City North during another heatwave, but it’s a bit of a trek from the centre, or a number 1 tram. It’s a standard Holiday Inn with air conditioning; I can’t remember if I had to take my own kettle.

I once stayed in a tiny but adorable room in Maison Emile (Emil Banningstraat 52), a nice little boutique hotel in the south. The sort of hotel that leaves a chocolate on your pillow. A fair distance from the centre, but convenient for the museums, and Café Boekowski.

RESTAURANTS

Antwerp has a ton of Michelin-starred places, none of which I’ve eaten in. You will need to make reservations for anything but fast-food restaurants, and bear in mind that kitchens close relatively early, around 9.30-10pm.

I like the Takumi Ramen chain (good for dairy intolerants such as myself), especially their Grote Markt branch – the branches near the station are better for takeaways; l’Entrepôt du Congo (Vlaamsekaai 42), a reasonably priced trad brasserie in the south; my friend Inge treated me to an excellent birthday steak in the fab brasserie Bourla (Graanmarkt 7).

Expensive Michelin-starred restaurants: https://guide.michelin.com/tw/en/antwerpen/be-antwerpen/restaurants/1-star-michelin?sort=distance

Trip Advisor’s cheaper recommendations: https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=Cheap+Food&find_loc=Antwerp

BARS

The later it gets, the more crowded the bars, especially at weekends; I usually aim for l’heure d’apéro, between 5pm and 7pm, but most bars worth their salt provide things like tea and coffee as well as alcohol during the day. Here are some of my favourites:

Centrum – Café De Kat (Wolstraat 22) – splendid old brown bar. I once made it my life’s mission to get the proprietor to smile. He did, eventually.

Centrum – De Duifkens (Graanmarkt 5) Sometimes there’s a nice cat; I think his name is Bolleke.

Centrum – Het Souke (Hoogstraat 59) Sometimes there’s a nice cat called Cava.

Centrum: Dogma (Wijngaardstraat 5) – an excellent cocktail bar, very relaxed ambience, plus they knew how to rustle up a Gibson (for research purposes) even though it wasn’t on their menu.

North of Chinatown and Amsterdam Centraal – Beerlovers Bar (Rotterdamstraat 105) – a good, friendly bar in a rather dodgy area. Extensive beer menu.

Het Zuid – Café Boekowski (Bolivarplaats 4) My favourite bar ever. I used to spend half my time here when I lived around the corner. Small, intimate, lined with bookshelves; Lucas the manager has great musical taste. Beer menu is not extensive, but has some of my favourites (Bolleke, Seef, Tripel Karmeliet, Duvel etc). They serve soup of the day, bowls of chili or Lebanese veggie with garlic bread.

Het Zuid – Chatleroi (Graaf van Hoornestraat 2) Cat-themed decoration. Punk and New Wave on the sound system.

Het Zuid – De Nieuwe Linde (Pacificatiestraat 49) Reliable neighbourhood bar.

There are lots of other bars I’ve never tried, but which I’m sure are absolutely fine. The only one you should definitely avoid is Café De Leeuw van Vlaanderen (Jezuïetenrui 1), which on the outside looks charming and traditional, but is actually an extreme right-wing nationalist hangout. I went in there once by mistake.

BEER

Top tip: Tripel beers are blonde, and stronger than Dubbel beers, which are brown. Even if you don’t normally care for dark beer, I recommend you try, for example, Westmalle Dubbel (7%) or Rochefort 6 (7.5%) because they are delicious.

Another top tip: I don’t drink as much as I used to, and if you’re younger and beefier you can probably hold your alcohol better than I can these days, but as a rule of thumb: one Duvel (8.5%) makes me tipsy; two Duvels make me quite drunk; three Duvels would probably make me ratfaced. Anything 8% and over I approach with extreme caution, and have to watch my intake carefully. Three Bollekes (5.2%) in one evening is probably my limit.

I drink quite a lot of BOLLEKE, brewed in the local De Koninck brewery (which you can visit, if you want), and available in nearly every bar in Antwerp. It’s very tasty, much nicer than Belgian staples like Jupiler or Maes, and only 5.2%, so I can drink more than one bottle in an evening without getting completely legless. De Koninck also produces TRIPEL D’ANVERS (8%) which is served in a glass on which the Antwerp skyline has been etched, and WILD JO (6%).

Another local brewery is Antwerpse Brouw Compagnie, which produces delicious SEEF BIER (6.5%), which comes in a bottle with a beautiful retro-style label. See also MISS LUCIE (8%) and RADIO MINERVA (7%).

Other Belgian beers I like (not necessarily local):

Orval (6.2%)

Duvel 6.66 (6.66%)

Tripel Karmeliet (8.4%)

Westmalle Dubbel (7%); Westmalle Extra (4.8%)

Rochefort 6 (7.5%)

La Chouffe (8%) It has a little gnome in a red cap on the label. This seems to be on tap at a lot of places.

Quintine Blonde (8%) It has a witch on the label.

AREAS

CENTRAAL STATION

The area around Antwerpen Centraal station – one of the most beautiful stations in western Europe – is not bad by usual station area standards (unlike Gare du Midi in Brussels, which is a shithole). De Keyserlei, the main street leading from the station towards the town centre, is full of cafés and restaurants, most of which seem ok (eg Wagamama, Exki, Starbucks plus decent takeaways Takumi and Thai Wok). The bars here tend to be quite boisterous. North of the station is Astridplein, a crappy, traffic-clogged square which they are planning to redevelop soon. North of Astridplein is Van Wesenbekestraat, aka Antwerp’s tiny Chinatown, lined with Asian (mostly Chinese and Thai, I think) restaurants. I’ve eaten in a couple of these and they were excellent. There is also a good Delhaize supermarket here.

Immediately east of the railway station is Antwerp Zoo, one of the oldest zoos in the world, architecturally interesting, and classified as a monument. (The bigger animals have been moved to a more spacious area outside the city.) To the east of the zoo is Borgerhout, where we all vote Marxist, but it’s slowly becoming gentrified. I regularly drink in BarBob (Kroonstraat 80) and, when that’s closed, the ultra-hip Café Mombasa (Moorkensplein 37).

THE DIAMOND DISTRICT

Sounds fun, doesn’t it. Don’t bother, unless you enjoy looking in boring jewellers’ windows. I use it regularly as a short cut to the multiplex, and there’s really nothing to see, apart from a beautiful Husky/Malamute in one jeweller’s window. Otherwise it’s all badly parked cars, shouty people delivering things out of badly parked vans, cars turning into the entrances to multi-storey car parks, noise, dust, roadworks and a sprinkling of bewildered-looking tourists. The least they could have done is to have made the pavements glittery, or have chandeliers instead of ordinary street lighting, something.

CENTRUM

The main shopping street is Meir; it’s pedestrianised, but watch out for bicycles and scooters, because I guarantee they will not watch out for you. There’s an Inno department store – a Belgian fixture, quite possibly one of the most boring department store chains ever. (Used to be known as L’innovation; in 1967 a devastating fire at their flagship store in Brussels burned down, killing 251 people. Right-wing conspiracy theorists have been trying to pin the blame on anti-Vietnam war protesters ever since, though the truth was more prosaic: no proper exit signs or escape routes, no sprinklers, a chimney effect generated by the building’s gallery design, surrounding streets clogged with parked cars etc. Belgian fire regulations were rewritten afterwards.)

Also in Meir – Uniqlo + FNAC (dvds and blu-rays have now been largely replaced by Bobbleheads, and are way too expensive anyway compared to what’s on offer at Fopp, but their English book section isn’t bad) + Hema (Dutch chain, useful for cheap tat + extra-long, cheap phone recharging cables) + all the usual suspects: H&M, Zara, Primark, C&A etc.

Around the corner in Wapper (that’s the name of the street) is De Slegte – an excellent bookshop with a lot of English books, many of them secondhand (I offloaded a ton of mine there last year) and the Rubenshuis, recently reopened after refurbishment; I think the entrance is now around the corner in Hopland; it’s a nice little museum/townhouse with a tiny garden; I particularly recommend the Annunciation with Totally Unimpressed Cat.

More interesting than Meir, shopping and strolling-wise, are Kleine Markt (there’s a great stationery shop called Stad Leest + The Joker bar next door); Korte Gasthuisstraat; Hoogstraat; Nationalestraat; Melkmarkt, Korte Nieuwstraat and Korte Koepoortstraat.

Kloosterstraat used to be full of fascinating bric-a-brac and junk shops, though many have closed over the last few years. But it’s still a good street for window-shopping and a pleasant way to walk from Centrum to Het Zuid: interesting furniture shops, a nice art bookshop (Erik Tonen), a vinyl/CD shop, boutiques etc.

Off GROENPLAATS are the single-spired Gothic Cathedral (they never got round to adding the planned second spire; the cathedral is said to have inspired Robert Aickman’s The Cicerones, though it feels too bright and airy to be sinister; some major Rubens though) and lots of little streets stuffed with bars and restaurants, and Grote Markt with its central Brabofontein topped by a statue of Silvus Brabo throwing the severed hand of the Giant Antigoon into the river Scheldt. You can buy chocolate hands. The whole severed hand thing is a wee bit unfortunate given the history of Belgian involvement in the Congo. I recommend King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild: a terrific read, and not quite as depressing as you expect since it’s also the story of early human rights activists such as E.D. Morel and George Washington Williams.

Also nearby is VRIJDAGMARKT, a small square lined with cafés and restaurants, and the entrance to the PLANTIN-MORETUS MUSEUM, a must for anyone interested in old printing presses, fonts and typefaces, the history of printing etc.

HET ZUID/THE SOUTH

Estate agents always describe this area as “bruisend” (the same word as for fizzy water) meaning trendy. Most of the restaurants here look posh and expensive but also pretentious and mediocre (apart from l’Entrepôt du Congo), but there are some excellent bars.

Get there via tram numbers 1 (get off at Bres or Montigny), 4 (get off at Museum) or 10 (get off at Bres) – but it’s only about 30 minutes’ walk from the station, or 20 minutes’ walk from Groenplaats via Kloosterstraat or Nationalestraat. It might also be pleasant to walk along the bank of the Scheldt, providing all the heavy road and pavement works are finished (I haven’t been there for a while).

Museums: KMSKA (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, recently refurbished), FOMU (photo museum), M HKA (contemporary art). All worth visiting.

ZURENBORG

Very hip area in south-east Antwerp; lots of bars and Art Nouveau architecture. I don’t know the quartier that well, but there’s a very agreeable gay bar called Den Draak (Draakplaats 1)

LINKEROEVER

You can reach the left bank of the river Scheldt via the St Anna’s Tunnel, but honestly, there’s not that much to see over there, apart from a terrific view of Antwerp across the river. (I might be wrong, but haven’t explored there much.)

HET EILANDJE

Top attractions: MAS (Museum aan de Stroom; the view from the roof is incredible) and the Red Star Line Museum. There appear to be lots of cafés and restaurants in the vicinity but I haven’t been to any one of them.

SCHIPPERSKWARTIER

The red-light district.

CINEMAS

UGC ANTWERPEN (Van Ertbornstraat 17) is a 17-screen multiplex a few minutes’ walk from the railway station. All the screens are a reasonable size, and English-language films are shown in their original versions, with French and Dutch subtitles.

DE CINEMA (Maarschalk Gérardstraat 4) often has matinee screenings of classic films on Sundays. All films shown in their original versions, usually with Dutch or English subtitles. Tickets are 8 euros. It’s an arts centre, and there’s also a bar.

CINEMA CARTOON’S (Dutch apostrophe) is an arthouse cinema (Kaasstraat 4/6) near Grote Markt. All films shown in their original versions, with French and/or Dutch subtitles. Tickets are 12 euros. There is a bar in the basement.

LUMIÈRE (Lakenstraat 14) is an arthouse cinema on the ground floor of the FOTOMUSEUM building in Het Zuid. All films shown in their original versions, with French and/or Dutch subtitles. Tickets are 12 euros. There is a sort of makeshift bar in the foyer. Also, the Fotomuseum shop is fun, and full of useless things you really really want to buy.