Antwerp to Tallinn - Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World - page 15

ONCE we've checked into a hotel and dropped off our bags, we begin our explorations of downtown Ant-
werp. To my delight, it turns out the city brims with the sort of bizarre, medieval lore that I've come to
expect from my continental hamlets.
For instance, near a pretty riverbank there's a statue of a mythical creature named Lange Wapper. Our
English-language visitors' pamphlet describes him as a “water giant” who sleeps under the “meat hall.” Mr.
Wapper specializes in terrorizing drunkards and, perhaps less endearingly, little children. Another statue,
near the town square, shows a man in the midst of hurling a large, severed hand. This pose somehow relates
to Antwerp's name, which can be translated as “hand throw.” The name is derived from a fairy-tale legend
about a brave fellow who hacked off an evil monster's hand and then, for reasons not fully clear, threw it
into the river.
Nowadays, Antwerp embraces severed-hand imagery as a kind of macabre municipal symbol. In the
downtown shops, you can buy little souvenir chocolates shaped like hands. And in the sex district, a store-
front window features lots of black, molded rubber hands—firmly clenched, as though preparing to enter a
compact space. I'm not totally certain, but my guess is that these hands somehow get employed in a force-
ful salute to the city's proud history.
If Antwerp is known for one thing—besides civically oriented sex toys—it's the diamond trade. About
80 percent of the world's uncut diamonds (and half its cut diamonds) pass through this city each year. As
we stroll through the diamond district, past its window displays of glittering necklaces, an armored truck
suddenly prowls around the corner—flanked by four footmen wearing bulletproof vests and cradling sub-
machine guns.
Have you ever been surprised by a man who is holding a submachine gun? If not, you should really try
it sometime. Invigorating! I freeze in place, my eyes locked on the weapon, then step gingerly to the side,
instinctively pulling my hands from my pockets and holding them out where the gunmen can see them.
Meanwhile, a pair of orthodox Jews walks past nonchalantly, toting heavy suitcases chained to their waists.
They don't even flinch. Visible automatic firearms are an everyday occurrence here and no cause for alarm.
BY the next afternoon, we're ready to resume circumnavigating the earth. We walk to the railway station
and catch an intercity train. It's full of Belgian commuters, and everything about it—from its clean, shiny
surfaces to its mobile phone-tapping passengers in business attire—screams efficiency. We get off in Brus-
sels and connect to the high-speed Thalys line, which will zoom us onward to Cologne.
The Thalys locomotive used on this route is a French-made TGV model. TGV stands for train à grande
vitesse , which roughly translates to “train of a lot of fastness.” At one point, shortly after leaving Brussels,
we reach a bracing 185 mph, according to the readout on Rebecca's GPS. If our taxi in Antwerp felt like
a missile, this feels like a comet. When the train accelerates, the trees outside the window dissolve into a
green-brown blur. Passengers sway gently in the aisle as we make the leap to warp speed.
Sadly, the Thalys sprinkles these high-speed bursts between much longer stretches spent slogging down
older tracks, where the train tops out at a mere 60 or 70 mph. It's the same limitation you'll find on Acela,
the U.S. northeast corridor's semisuccessful experiment in semi-high-speed rail. (Though that's about all
that Thalys has in common with Amtrak. For instance, the Thalys café car is stocked with a wide, attractive
selection of food and beverages, instead of three bags of chips and a rotting ham sandwich. European trains
handle matters of sustenance far more skillfully.)
Our eventual destination is Rostock, a German city of 200,000 on the shore of the Baltic Sea. From there,
our belief is that we'll be able to catch a ferry that goes to Finland. Quick surface-travel comparison: A
flight from Belgium to Finland would take about two and a half hours. Our route—via rail and water—will