Spell or Get Out
“Okay, sit here,” she says after she had us put down our backpacks. She points to a long table with benches to sit on. After sitting, Raphael, owner of Den Hetzenketel Tavern and Hostel, tears open a bag of cookies that seem alot like animal crackers but are instead letters and numbers. “Spell your whole first name,” he says.
“You have 2 minutes or we kick you out.”
Both Timothy and myself, Daniel do this easily.
“That was too easy. Spell your last names too.”
Johnsen is easy. Schleicher is tougher and Raphael helps us find the last “c” while the woman (I can’t remember her name) sits at the table with a cigarette in her fingers, smoke rising lazily toward the 12 foot (or higher) ceiling.
“Okay, now do your credit card #’s…just joking.”
We sat and chatted while we ate our letters and drank tea. After a while, she showed us to our room on the third floor. The stairs from first to second floor is a “U” shaped stairs. No problem. Keep in mind the ceilings are high. The stairs from second to third floor need a rope and grappnel along with carabiners, pick and spiked boots to get up it. It was the steepest spiral staircase with 4 inch steps (at the fat end) I’ve ever seen. In a later blog, Tim or I will write about hiking to the top of a mountain called the Shilthorn in Switzerland. These stairs were steeper. On the safe side, Den Hetzenketel was a folk bar and the first night we were there, they had Irish folk dancing. That day, we explored the city we were in…Antwerp, Belgium. Where Brugge had alot of old quaint Belgian mood, Antwerp had thriving Belgian big city economy with bits of quaint thrown in. They have a tunnel which goes under the Schelde river. They have a “graffiti” park where the walls, tables, benches are all looking “inner city, ganger tag art”. Photo museums, a big Cathedral, lots of bars to hop, shopping and many streets to roam kept us busy for 2 days, ending with live folk music at Den Hetzenketels. A very relaxing city to be in if you take your time and enjoy the back alley roads and avoid the tourist zones.
Next blog about Switzerland.
Write later,
Dan
Tags: Antwerp, Europe
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