Sleeping Around (23 page)

‘You can borrow Dad's bike,' Joris said when he suggested we go for a ride into town. The bike was an old, clunky-looking thing which Joris's 62-year-old father still rode into the city, where he worked as a town planner. Joris said that it was ‘a short ride into town', but I was bit dubious about his interpretation of ‘short'. This was coming from a man who thought nothing of riding more than 100 kilometres a day through a desert in searing heat.

Joris didn't own a car. ‘I ride everywhere,' he said. And with everything it seemed. Joris told me that he had carried a TV, an office chair, a dozen planks of wood and several bags of hash on his bike. Not all at the same time I should add. ‘I used to ride to Holland with my brother all the time,' Joris said. ‘It's only thirty kilometres to the border, so we used to ride there to get hashish. We'd smoke a little of it then we'd just float home.'

Antwerp has dedicated bike tracks away from the road, but the bike track was busier than the road itself. After twenty minutes on the saddle, we were on the outskirts of the city centre. ‘This is called
Joods Antwerpen
,' Joris bellowed over the traffic. We were in the middle of the Jewish area, which was full of diamond shops. ‘Antwerp is the centre of the world's diamond trade and four in five of the world's rough diamonds pass through here,' Joris said as we trundled past an ultra Orthodox Jewish family complete with ringlets, hats and ten kids in tow.

As we entered Antwerp's
Oude Stad
(Old City), we had to negotiate narrow cobbled lanes that were lined with gabled townhouses with leaded windows. What made it even more difficult was that I was having trouble concentrating on riding given the delicious smells coming from the chocolate shops and waffle houses. We also had to dodge whooshing blue-and-red trams that were like caterpillars imagined by a Japanese toy maker.

‘First we will stop at my favourite place in all of Antwerp,' Joris said as we pulled up on the side of the road. We had stopped in front of a chip shop, or a
frituur
. There was a
frituur
on just about every corner, but this shop had the distinction of being called Frituur No. 1.

‘French fries are in fact Belgian,' Joris told me while we waited for our order. ‘In Holland they call them the right name. They call them
Vlaamse frieten
or Flemish fries.'

I had my mammoth serving of Flemish fries with mayonnaise and ketchup, but I was tempted to try the ‘mammal sauce' which was one of ten sauces on offer, including chilli, BBQ, meatball, garlic and gypsy sauce.

Our bumpy teeth-chattering bicycle tour continued through the stony expanse of the
Grote Markt
, which was surrounded by stately seventeenth-century buildings that once housed Antwerp's powerful merchant guilds—and now contain touristy restaurants serving pots of steamed mussels. We stopped in the
handschoenmarkt
(the glove market) in front of the sixteenth-century
Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal
(Cathedral of Our Lady) whose tapering tower rises over the Antwerp skyline like an intricately carved Gothic stalactite. ‘The church is famous for its impressive collection of Rubens paintings,' Joris said, as we hopped off our bikes. ‘Would you like to see them?' I do like Rubens' exuberant Baroque style, which emphasises movement, colour and sensuality.

‘Or shall we have a beer?' Joris said, gesturing to the Paters Vaetje pub next to the church.

I opted for the impressive collection of beautifully crafted beers.

This tiny pub had 280 different beers on the menu. We'd grabbed an outside table in the warm sun right up against the church wall. The traffic-free square was full of dining and drinking folk spilling out of the busy terraced cafes and bars.

Some of the high-octane beers on the menu had 12 per cent alcohol, so I'm guessing that after downing a couple of them you wouldn't be able to get your tongue around half of the names. There was a Corsendonck Pater, Dikke Matile, Flierefluiter, Gouden Carolustripel, Couckelaerschen Doedel, Tronbadous Obsura and a Witkap Pater Stimulo.

‘At Bierhuis Kulminator across town, they have seven hundred different beers,' Joris said as we perused the beer menu. I was having trouble picking one from the mere 280.

‘You choose one for me,' I said.

Joris ordered me a Kwak. ‘It's called a Kwak because that's the sound it makes when you take your last mouthful,' Joris said as I was presented with a mini-yard glass that came perched on a wooden stand and looked like something from a mad scientist's lab. Most of the 280 beers came with their own distinctive glass, which is uniquely embossed and specially shaped to enhance the taste and aroma. The Kwak was a dark, or
dubbel
, beer, and was a relatively weak drop with only 8 per cent alcohol. When I got to the bulb-like bottom of the glass, the beer gushed out, mostly over my shirt, and made a distinctive ‘kwak' noise.

‘Another one?' Joris asked, polishing off his Tripel Karmeliet. ‘This is part of our lunch you know, because in Belgium, beer is called a “sandwich in a glass”.'

I tried a Couckelaerschen Doedel next simply because it had the longest name.

I asked Joris what the Flemish thought of the Walloons, their neighbours and fellow countrymen and he said, ‘It's like a bad marriage. We are two different nations living together and we can't stand each other. There is a lot of resentment from the Flemish people because our stronger economy supports Walonia, which has double the unemployment of Flanders. Also, we have to learn French at school, but the Walloons don't learn Flemish at all.'

Joris was very passionate about politics and he talked about Antwerp's recent elections. ‘The extreme right is very popular in Antwerp,' Joris said. ‘And one-third of the people in Antwerp want Flanders and Walonia to be divided up into two separate countries.'

After our Belgian beer fix we stopped for a Belgian chocolate fix. This will probably get me thrown out of the CouchSurfing Chocolate Lover's Group, but I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of the famed Belgian chocolates. I'm a simple man and I don't like those fancy-schmancy ‘praline' fillings. Still, just for research purposes, I forced myself to eat a good handful.

No wonder people in Belgium ride everywhere. They have to burn off all the chips, beer and chocolate. We rode down to the River Scheldt—which is home to the second largest port in Europe after Rotterdam—and headed south along the riverfront. We were heading to a restaurant that Joris had suggested for dinner. ‘It doesn't really have a name,' he said. That sounded promising. ‘It's a bit of a ride, but it's worth it.' Bit of a ride all right. By the time we got there, it was dark. Our monumental trek took us through an industrial wasteland, which seemed eerily bereft of traffic and people. Well, I don't think there were many people. It was hard to tell because there was also a distinct lack of streetlights.

The bar of ‘No-name Restaurant' was a crumbling brick building that was lit up with Christmas lights in the middle of decrepit and seemingly abandoned warehouses. The actual restaurant was out the back in a huge open-sided army tent, which was fitted out with long trestle tables and old cinema seats as chairs.

The place was popular, though. As well as people in the army tent eating dinner, behind it there were small groups gathered around fires blazing in huge metal drums.

When we joined the long queue for food, I noticed that most of the people around us were smoking joints. This was very much a dreadlocks and cheesecloth-shirt-wearing crowd. ‘You pay as much or as little as you like for a plate of food,' Joris said as we neared the front of the queue. ‘Most people pay about three Euros.'

‘You wouldn't even get a slice of bread for that in Iceland,' I said.

My plate was piled high with food and, with all the joints and dreadlocks, I wasn't surprised that it was vegetarian fare. We grabbed a cinema row next to a group of friendly happy locals—although the joints may have had something to do with that. The food was delicious. And this is coming from a man who usually says that ‘It's not a proper meal unless it comes with meat'. Mind you, I couldn't actually see what I was eating because it was so dark in the tent.

As we were leaving I noticed a poster on the wall of the bar. The bar was having a SLUTFEST. A party for loose women. That could be interesting.

‘
Slut
means like final,' Joris said. ‘Because the place is closing down in two weeks.'

As part of Joris's job at the radio station, he was involved with the KLAP!DORP! Film Festival (I suggested that the PR department might want to re-look the name). It was the opening night and Joris had procured us two VIP passes.

‘Will I be alright dressed like this?' I asked. I was wearing cargo pants and my well-travelled and somewhat shabby fleece. Joris said I would be fine, but I just hoped I didn't look too scruffy walking down the red carpet.

We rode for three hours (well, it seemed like three hours, particularly as my hands had gone numb from the icy wind that was blowing off the water) to the main docks. After we'd passed several hulking cargo ships and more warehouses, we stopped at a small open tent at the entrance to a cluster of small buildings. I was thinking that this couldn't possibly be it, but on the side of the tent was a large ‘KLAP!DORP! Film Festival' banner. There was no red carpet, just a hand-drawn arrow on a piece of cardboard pointing the way to the bar.

It wasn't quite champagne and dinner suits. More like beer in plastic cups and tatty grunge wear. The crowd was mostly that grungy, cool crowd that wears sunglasses inside even though they're not famous. There were lots of dreadlocks, shaved heads and novelty glasses. ‘It's an alternative film festival,' Joris said.

‘They could still have canapés, though,' I said sulkily.

We grabbed a beer and strolled out to the car park behind the bar, which was serving as the drive-in cinema. There were all of nine cars, plus a crowd of hearty folk sitting in a small grandstand. It wouldn't have been more than 5 degrees. The screen was on the wall of an old warehouse and the projector was set up in the back of a truck.

We did get VIP seats, though. We sat in the festival organiser's car in the front row. ‘He's too busy running around,' Joris said. As soon as we'd climbed in, Joris opened the sunroof and lit up a joint. The movie was a
film noir
horror flick called
Cat People,
a 1942 black and white film that was in English with French and Dutch subtitles. It may as well have been in Dutch, though, because I had no idea what was going on. The story, I think, was about a woman who married Oliver Reed, but was afraid that when she got sexually aroused she would transform into a panther and kill somebody. Throughout the film, Joris's friends would briefly jump in the back seat, pass a joint around and chat to Joris in Flemish. I don't speak Flemish, but I'm guessing the conversation went something like:

Friend: ‘What the fuck is happening in this film?'

Joris: ‘I've got no idea.'

Friend: ‘Right, see you then. I'm off to find another joint.'

The film ended when the
femme fatale
turned into a panther and chased Oliver Reed's secretary around the swimming pool.

There were two other film venues set up in the surrounding and somewhat shabby buildings and the first ‘cinema' we checked out was playing a Flemish film. Mind you, we couldn't actually see the screen through the thick haze produced by the smokers in the audience. An equally thick haze had also enveloped the docks as fog drifted in and transformed it into the set of a classic
film noir
.

We ducked into the largest venue, which was full, and stood at back of the room. The film was a documentary, in English, about a death metal band from South Africa. They were showing one of the band's film clips, which featured the band members jumping about in a forest playing along to possibly the worst song I've ever heard. Suddenly the band stopped playing and began throwing blood all over each other. When they forcibly stripped a girl and covered her breasts with blood, I almost fell over. ‘Jesus, what is this?' I blurted out—perhaps a little too loudly.

When Joris burst out laughing in response to my shocked outburst, he spat out a mouthful of burger all over the guy in front of him.

We sheepishly moved away and found a seat. It wasn't the gratuitous violence that worried me so much as the audience's blasé attitude even when the band members started whipping the girl. The fellow sitting next to me was fast asleep, but snapped awake when the girl let loose a blood-curdling scream (as you do when you're getting a serious whipping).

When the band broke into a song that sounded like Satan himself singing, I said ‘I think I've had enough'. Besides, I couldn't put off the long ride back through the fog to Joris's any longer.

‘We've probably ridden just over thirty kilometres today,' Joris said, when I commented that I was sure we'd done more than a hundred. On the way back, however, we did ride an extra one or two more. We went via an all-night
frituur
because, as Joris said, ‘It's important to have some chips before you go to bed'.