The story goes that in years gone by a mean old giant controlled the bend in the river Scheldt where Antwerp lies. He demanded that all passing ships paid him a heavy toll. Those failing to pay would have their hands chopped off. A Roman soldier called Silvius Brabo decided that enough was enough, slayed the giant, chopped off his giant hand and chucked it in the river.
I wish I knew this story when we visited Antwerp last weekend. I could have impressed my fellow site-seers with my knowledge. Instead we all stood round the statue of a man with a squirty hand and wondered why someone had bothered putting it there.
We were given a tour of the city later in the day, but I gleaned minimal information from our tour guide because he spoke very fast and weird-sounding Dutch (I’m guessing he had a Belgian accent?). I was wondering why the man seemed to be overly-interested in stories about livestock until Peter told me he was talking about the city’s maritime history and it was ships not sheep to which he was referring.
Despite the confusion, it was great to check out this very pretty place – to crane our necks at the Cathedral (123 metres high, 169 years to build – thankyou web) and to wander through the beautiful old streets. Antwerp seems to borrow the French obsession with food along with the Dutch obsession with creating a lovely cozy ambience, and its countless restaurants and bars looked so inviting it was hard to walk past them.
Luckily we didn’t encounter any threatening giants, so we left Antwerp on Sunday morning with both hands intact, but we did have a bit of a hangover.
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