The 'Rents Visit - Part I

So most of you know that my parents came to visit for three weeks from March 25 to April 15th. We had a really great time, but I think they may have been ready to head back by the end of it- we wore them out! I thought I had allotted for adequate down time, but now that I'm looking back at the calendar, I guess I kept our schedule pretty packed. Perhaps something to bear in mind next time. Anyway, in those three weeks, we hit SIX countries and hopefully gave them a nice taste of Europe. They saw Belgium, France, Holland, Germany, England and Luxembourg. We really only drove through Luxembourg, but since we got out at a gas station, I'm going to count it.

They arrived in good form at the Brussels airport and actually held up quite well through dinner. My Mom adjusted pretty easily to the time difference, but I think my Dad (as most do) had a bit more of a hard time. Anyway, their first full day here I took them to the Plantin-Moretus Museum. The museum, housed in the original publishing house, chronicles the start and development of the printing industry in Antwerp by the Plantin and Moretus families beginning in the mid-15oos. My father wanted to be a printer as a boy and even worked in a printing press, so I thought this would be a great outing for us. The exhibit was really interesting and the English audio guide made it even more so. They had lots of really old scripts and two of the oldest surviving printing presses around.

Here's my dad in front of those two historical presses:


And my Mom and Dad outside the Plantin-Moretus House:

After the museum I took them to a little lunch place my friend Stephanie introduced me to. We call it The Convent, perhaps because in the courtyard of the building where the restaurant is, there is also a tiny, little chapel that you can now see behind a pane of glass. However, I just realized the last time I was there that the name of the restaurant is actually De Groot Witte Arend, which means The Great White Eagle. And now that I know that, I was able find their website. There aren't any pictures of the chapel, but you can at least see the courtyard. Anyway, I'm helping my parents sort through the menu using my "menu Flemish" that I've picked up over the last six months and my mom points to one of the appetizers and asks what it is. I attempt to decipher the description and tell her I think it's some kind of meat pastry with a tomato sauce. As I'm trying to determine whether or not I can give them any better explanation, the server comes over and asks us if we'd like an English menu. Now, this would normally be no big deal, and actually quite welcome, however I was a little puzzled by this as I had been to this restaurant at least 5 or 6 times and never before had anyone offered me the English menu, even though I always order in English AND this server had been my server several times previously! Oh well. So once we get the English menu, we look at the list of appetizers to determine what the one my mom wanted was, but it's not listed. So we ask the server about it and he says, "It's a meat pastry with tomato sauce". Well.... guess whose Flemish ain't so bad! So Mom & Dad look at each other, shrug, and say, "why not?". I thought it was pretty adventuresome of them and the little puff pastry with ground beef inside and tomato sauce around the outside turned out to be quite good. Sorry no pictures for you.

The next day my friend Nicole gave us a ride to Breendonk. Breendonk was originally a fort built in 1909 as part of a series of forts intended for the defense of Antwerp. However, during WWII the Nazis thought it would make an ideal concentration camp, and thus it was turned into a place of misery, torture and death. Because this camp isn't located in Germany/Poland, it has been very well preserved and totally intact.

Here's a look from the outside. The fort has a moat surrounding it:


The English audio guide was extremely well done and took you on a two-hour tour of the whole facility. The guide really gave you a feeling of what it must have looked, smelled, and felt like to have been a prisoner there. My parents and I decided that the weather that day (wet, dreary, and VERY cold) gave us and even more "authentic" experience. After two hours of walking around the camp, I couldn't feel my fingers or toes and I was dressed for the weather. I can't imagine what it must have been like to endure life in that camp day after day barely dressed, barely fed, and beaten constantly. As horrific and disturbing and graphic as it is, I'd definitely recommend a visit if you're going to be in/around Antwerp. It is incredibly educational and the lives of those who suffered and died there deserve to be remembered.

This is a picture of the area behind the fort where those unfortunate souls who had done anything to anger the prison guards were brought to meet their terrible end by firing squad.

And here are the "facilities" at Breendonk. So much for privacy, eh? And you were only allowed to use these lovely facilities AFTER you had asked permission and IF the guard on duty felt like letting you go. Otherwise you just had to hold it. Although sometimes they were allowed to go without even asking like when all the prisoners were marched in there to simultaneously "go" and take 1 minute cold showers.

I took a picture of my parents and they of me, but we agreed that if felt a little weird. Too hard to smile knowing what took place here.

After Breendonk, I took my parents to lunch at Het Elfde Gebod (The Eleventh Commandment). It's a cute little restaurant right outside the main cathedral of Antwerp and it has all sorts of religious statues adorning the walls and counters. It's definitely an original place!

And in this one it looks like my Dad hears the voice of one of the Saints calling out to him:

Ok, next post: Our trip to Normandy! Hope you're all well!