April 13 – Antwerp, Belgium. Welcome to Belgium. Antwerp is the city of diamonds and chocolate, not chocolate diamonds. Oh don't forget about the beer and waffles. More on that later. Translated Antwerp means 'hand throwing'. First thing up, you guessed it, a walking tour of the old city. Where have I heard that before?
There are some interesting and unique things to see on the buildings here. First, this is, or at least was, a very Roman Catholic city. Many of the old buildings have a statue of the Madonna and Child on the corner of the front façade. Some also have a streetlight hung below it. The really old ones are very ornate, when they put up a new building sometimes they honor this tradition but with a much simpler statue of Mary. In medieval times you got a break on your taxes if you had the streetlight on the corner of your building. No such luck anymore.
We walked past houses from the Golden Age and the Cathedral with its outstanding left Tower. As in many old cathedrals, the budget or time ran out before the second tower was completed leaving a square blunt castle tower looking structure. It wasn't open so I couldn't go in. As we turned to leave the cathedral square a lady came out of a chocolate shop to offer us each a small bag holding two chocolates, a diamond and a hand. We'll get to the hand later.
When we got to the main square we found the jewels of Antwerp. Not the diamonds but the fully restored old city square. Most of the buildings have at least some golden features. Atop one was Saint George squaring off against the dragon, another had an angel, a third had a man peering out across the square. Perhaps the oddest one had a large golden fox sitting sideways but looking toward the front. The tallest house, the one with Saint George, was seven stories high. The other six houses on that side of the square were five stories tall. The guide said they were guild houses when they were built. I guess the golden figures on top represent their guild's logo.
The city hall is the tallest structure on the square and is topped off with a golden eagle. Below the eagle is the date 1574, and below that is a statue of Mary, crowned as queen of heaven, holding Jesus, crowned as king of heaven and earth. Below them is a shield made up of five coats-of-arms (the Spanish Habsburgs) flanked by statues of Justice and Prudence.
In front of the city hall is a large statue of a man, Silvius Brabo, a fictional Roman soldier, holding aloft a huge hand. At his feet lies the body of a giant, minus his right hand. The Brabo is standing on a boat being held aloft by a mermaid. The story says that the giant used to charge a toll to cross the bridge over the Scheldt River. If someone wouldn't or couldn't pay the giant cut off his hand and threw it in the river. Brabo rid the area of this giant by slaying him and throwing his hand in the river. This helps explain the name Antwerp and it's why one of the symbols of the city is the Giant's hand. They make hand chocolates, cookies, soap, etc.
It was a nice walk through an old city.
Later in the morning we went to the newly opened Red Star Line Museum. The Red Star line was founded in 1871 as a joint venture between the International Navigation Company of Philadelphia, which also ran the American Line, and the Société Anonyme de Navigation Belgo-Américaine of Antwerp, Belgium. The company's ships sailed between Antwerp, Liverpool and Southampton in England and New York and Philadelphia in the USA. The company operated until 1935 when the depression ruined them. Oddly enough their assets were sold to the Holland-America Line. My buddies HAL. Even if you've never sailed you may have seen a Red Star Line ID badge. In 'The Godfather II' when young Vito Corleone arrives in New York he's wearing one.
Several of their old brick warehouses have been opened as a museum dedicated to migration. The main thrust of the exhibits is to tell the stories of some of the over 2 million people who traveled Red Star to North America. There are some famous people in that group the most prominent of which is Albert Einstein. At one time Einstein traveled to England in the hopes of improving relations between the two countries but after the Nazis started to come into power he was smart enough to read the writing on the wall and headed for the USA.
There are a lot of crucial moments that have molded human history, but Albert Einstein leaving Germany and going to the USA has to rank up there with the biggest events, certainly of the 20th century, if not all of history. If he had stayed in Germany at the very least it's possible that to win WWII we would have had to invade Japan to end the war in the Pacific. Sure Oppenheimer and others actually built the A and H-bombs but they were standing on the shoulders of Einstein when they did it. I think the scenario would have played out differently. It's possible that Germany would have built the bomb first and I shudder to think what that would mean. I can't even speak German.
Others who traveled Red Star Line to the USA included Fred Astaire, Golda Meir (yes she came over to Canada before heading to Palestine), Admiral Hyman Rickover (as a six year old), father of the nuclear submarine and Arthur Murray of dance studio fame.
The exhibits are interactive. There's one section where you can sit on a seat and select a person from those pictured on the screen. That person's story is then related to you by a hand held speaker. Most of the stories didn't end in New York or Philadelphia. Many of the later immigrants had relatives in the USA or Canada and after getting off the ship they often had long and arduous train trips ahead to reach their final destinations.
One room was dedicated to the process of getting on the ship. There were physicals to take, background checks to be run and steps to be taken to insure that you didn't bring any hitchhikers aboard. If you passed the physical and background checks, you had to get undressed and all your clothes were steam sterilized as was all the luggage. Of course you were inspected for lice and other varmints while that was happening.
Another rooms told the story of arriving at Ellis Island. The same process was repeated in all the other immigration cities. First, another physical and background check. I you were sick and it would be treated; there was a large hospital right on the island. If you were sick and it was not treatable, you were on the next ship back to Europe. Same thing if the US background check showed anything. You had to prove that you had a way to support yourself or had relatives who would take you in. Quite a contrast to today's procedure where we sign people up for assistance the minute they arrive in our country, legal or not. To make this seem more real you actually follow the path of a person who was traveling. They even have a small ship's deck reproduced with exhibits from the various classes from First to Steerage.
In one display case they had all the documents for one family to take the journey. Talk about a lot of paperwork. Yikes.
At the end of the tour there are a few computer kiosks where you can enter an ancestors name to see if they traveled Red Star.
It was a great visit and one I probably would not have done on my own. I'm glad Tauck took us there.
After lunch we headed to Bier Central for a beer tasting. Belgians are proud of their beer and rightfully so. They are also proud of the fact that they invented fries. It is a great affront to them if you call the French fries, they will correct you by saying there's no such thing, Belgians invented fries so if you must put a country name on them it should be Belgium. Apparently when US GIs encountered fries for the first time they were in the French speaking part of Belgium and therefore assumed they were French. The French and Flemish parts of Belgium fight over who actually fired the first fry but they will both agree that it was a Belgian. The British remain neutral in this fight by calling their fries 'chips'.
The brewmeister introduced us to three types of Belgian beers and we got a large bag of fries to eat with them. They serve mayonnaise with their fries, not ketchup. The potatoes are fried twice so, as our tour leader said, with all that oil already in them it seems appropriate that you should add a little more before eating them. I have to say, after I got used to it, it was pretty good. The fries were outstanding, as was the beer. He looked like the typical image of a brewer, right down to the mustache.
On the way back to our pick up spot we walked through the Antwerp Railway Station. It's very impressive inside.
Another very nice day on the river.
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