Antwerpen & Cusqueñian reunions

30 June - 06 July

After a short train ride across the border from the south of the Netherlands, I arrived in Antwerpen train station, a very impressive 4-storey building with trains arriving on various levels. I managed to find Els, my host for the next week, in the station's foyer - it was great to catch up 2 1/2 months after leaving Cusco - and we headed off to the apartment where she lives with her mother, Arlette, to drop off my bags. Arlette & Els made me feel immediately welcome, and we had a short lunch before heading back into town.

There we met up with Déborah, who was able to visit for the weekend up from Paris. Together, Els took us around some of the tourist sites and some of her favourite local spots too. A coffee gave us a good chance to have a long-awaited catch-up, with lots of stories from Cusco, and we also headed to the top of a new museum for a good lookout over the city...

Antwerpen Grote Markt & Stadhuis (City Hall)
I found the NZ flag and was amused that I couldn't find the Australian one!

The view of Antwerpen with Els & Déborah

After dinner at home (I really was getting spoilt for home-cooked meals, a luxury I've missed for a while as I'm writing this!), we headed back to the city and had a couple of beers by the river, a great spot to watch the sunset.

Sunset over the river Scheldt

Antwerpen's Cathedral in the setting sun

Déborah had to head back to Paris, unfortunately, but once she'd left Els and I biked into town (Belgium is just as bike-friendly as The Netherlands) and wandered down the Meir, Antwerpen's central shopping street. It was the first of July - the first day of summer sales - and the street was crowded full of people looking for a bargains. Neither of us bought anything - at least not that day - but I've never seen so many people shopping at once. It put Christmas & Boxing Day sales back in NZ to shame.

We took the bikes through a tunnel under the river - 31 m underground and 572 m long to the other side. It was much more peaceful away from the sales crowds, biking along the river's edge for half an hour or so. To me, it was one of those things that you only ever really get to do when you're with locals - as a traveller, you'd probably never even know the tunnel was there, or the bike track. In the evening I got a small taste of Belgian university culture - a party inside the wall an old fortress near the university. I almost felt like a student again - though we never had any old stone fortresses to go to for parties!!

The next day was a bit of a relax day for both of us. We headed back to the Meir and I bought a new jersey and a pair of jeans to replace my old ones that had worn out. That evening I got even more of a taste of Belgian university culture - a Cantus. I've never experienced anything quite like one before - it's basically a bit of an exclusive singing club, with most of the songs being traditional or folk type songs, and the leaders picking on certain people to sing the beginning of each song. I was very kindly allowed to come along - you were supposed to be an "initiated" member of the club - and quite enjoyed the experience actually, even if I had a fair bit of trouble singing the songs in Flemish (about 80% of them). I was a bit more at home with the several English songs!

On Wednesday, we headed out on a train half an hour north out of Antwerpen, to a national park area known as De Zoom - Kalmthoutse Heide. The park used to be two seperate parks - one on the Belgian side of the border (Kalmthoutse Heide) and one on the Dutch side of the border (De Zoom) - but in these days of European harmony, it's now all one. It wasn't a great day, but it was quite empty and peaceful and there were a few nice views. We walked up to where the Dutch border sits, but there was hardly anything to see - literally just a fence with a gate. The only way we could tell it was the border was that it was shown on the map we had.

This is about the highest view you can get anywhere around - looking over the Belgian side of the park from the Dutch side

Els seems just as confused about the lack of a border notice as me

The next day we'd agreed to meet up with three more Cusqueñian friends. Mathilde came down from Utrecht for a night and we also met Elisabeth and Pieter C, both of whom live in Antwerpen. We had lunch at a Belgian sandwich store, Panos, went for another explore of the city, had an amazing Belgian chocolate coffee, some typical Belgian beer, Belgian bicky burgers for dinner... With lots of catching up stories in between of course! Elisabeth and Pieter C had to head off but Mathilde, Els and I met up with two of Els' other friends for a couple of drinks on the riverfront as the sun set. It was great to see some of the friends I'd made several months earlier again, and there were lots of good Cusco memories to share.

Pieter C, Mathilde. Elisabeth, myself & Els - a true Cusco reunion in Antwerpen's Grote Markt

Els, Mathilde and I sharing a bit of coca-cola love on the riverfront

The Cathedral at night

We also came across this street... It's kinda nice to be in a part of the world where "Pieter" is the normal spelling, not "Peter"!

Grote Pieter Pot Straat

Two friends Els had met in Mexico then came to stay on my last night in Antwerpen. Their English was OK, but it was a good opportunity for me to practice my Spanish again, and I found that I could still remember it quite well, even after not speaking it at all for six weeks. They were good fun and the four of us had a beer in town together that night.

And then, on my final morning, the weather finally came to the party - a beautiful warm day, which we enjoyed in Arlette's lovely garden, where she's grown lots of organic fruit and vegetables, and keeps a few hens too. I'd had great hospitality again for another week - thanks very much to both Els and Arlette - but it was off to Brussels/Bruxelles/Brussel!

Rotterdam & surrounds

26 - 29 June

I took a train to Rotterdam, where my great uncle & auntie Kees and Trees live. Again the Dutch trains were amazingly efficient and on-time and I got to the metro station to meet Trees right on schedule. Kees and Trees were very hospitable to me for the three nights I stayed with them, with some lovely home-cooked meals and took me around to see the sights. I felt very much at home.

They live in an area called Rhoon, just out of central Rotterdam. On my first night I went for a bike ride with Trees around the area - of course biking around is very easy every in the Netherlands. Trees showed me the house my great-grandparents, Oma and Opa Scheffers, lived in for a long time, which was nice to see.

The next day, Kees and I headed out to see the massive Rotterdam port, Maasvlakte, the largest port in Europe. The cranes and containers seemingly continue on forever - it makes a mockery of the 5 or 6 port cranes back home in Wellington. They're currently undergoing a massive expansion of reclaimed land, making the Netherlands 20 km² larger, and had a really interesting exhibition place about the reclaiming process - involving sand dredgers and sprayers, which I found fascinating from a Civil Engineering perspective.

We then went down to Neeltje Jans, a man-made island with a bit of a touristy but interesting amusement park type place at the largest of the storm surge barriers. There was an good 30 min film on the construction of the barriers, and a good exhibition about the history behind them - why they were built (as a response to the massive flooding of 1953), the design (gates able to be shut rather than complete blocking off of the area, for environmental reasons), etc. The gates eventually built are massive constructions, able to be closed in about an hour with warning of a storm surge above 3 m.

One of the massive gates at the Oosterscheldekering storm surge barriers

The entrance to Rotterdam port with two massive gate structures able to close off the river

After another evening of Scheffers hospitality, we headed the next day to Den Haag (or The Hague), the Dutch seat of parliament and royal residence (but not the official capital, which is Amsterdam). Den Haag is also a major centre for the UN with the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice.

We walked through the Binnenhof (the Dutch parliament) and past the royal palace. The former Dutch queen abdicated earlier in the year so there were still remnants of the celebrations for the new king, Willem Alexander I.

Kees and Trees' son-in-law, Rob, works in Den Haag so we met up with him for lunch in the main square, where he said he's often seen Dutch politicians having lunch or a coffee. The weather wasn't that great - it seemed to be a bit of a constant theme right through my time in the Netherlands unfortunately - but it was still enjoyable. After lunch we went past the UN Peace Palace before heading back to Rotterdam.

Binnenhof in Den Haag

With Kees & Trees in Den Haag's main square

UN Peace Palace

My last day, Kees and I headed into central Rotterdam itself for the first time. Rotterdam hasn't got a lot of major landmarks - it seemed a lot more modern than central Amsterdam, for example, which I believe is mainly due to the damage suffered during the German invasion of World War II. However we did get to see a small part of the massive port, including some truly huge dry docks and endless rows of containers and cranes. Of course there's also lots of provisions for larger boats to get past bridges...

A major central-Rotterdam bridge up to let a boat through

On the Spido boat in Rotterdam harbour, with the Rotterdam cruise ship and the Dutch (not French!) flag

My Oma and her family used to live in Rotterdam, and my great-grandfather, Opa Scheffers, used to have a cafe business in the central city. After spending some time in labour camps in Germany during the war, he returned to Rotterdam and set up a restaurant in a new (post-war) mall in the central city, the Lijnbaan, which is still the hub of Rotterdam's shopping area today. Kees showed me where the restaurant used to be - the business was long ago sold but was very profitable for many years. It was quite neat to see where it all happened!

The last sight we went past was the central city's main church, the Laurenskerk, and it was very impressive - almost fully reconstructed after the bombings during the war. I couldn't help taking a few photos inside...

Candles in front of a window inside the Laurenskerk

What an organ!

Then it was back to Made for one last night. Trees very kindly drove me back there, and once again I have to be very grateful for the lovely hospitality I got from both Kees and Trees, as well as from Tante Cock in Made. But after staying the night it was off to Belgium in the morning. It was goodbye to family and time to meet up with some more of the friends I'd made in South America!