8:30 in Leuven train station. 9:05 train to Antwerpen. Weather: +7, cloudy. The ride took little bit more than an hour to Antwerpen, so a good time to get to know other course mates, but I sat next to teacher and her friend which by the end game out very interesting conversation about Belgium. Did you know that prime minister of belgium is Elio Di Lupo and he's actually a son of two Italian immigrants, he doesn't speek flemish, which is actually most widely speaking language in Belgium, but he's learning it. And he is gay. He game out with that already in 2006. He openly confronted that he's gay: "Yes. So what?" were his answer to the question. I think that shows quite a lot of Belgium as a country and people who live here (I know Mart would comment it: "That everyone in Belgium is gay" :D), cause Elio Di Rupo was elected to be the prime minister. The huge problem that Belgium, and not only Belgium has/had, was with the illegal workers and unemployment. The government game out with a nice solution to that. Belgian can go online and buy certain checks. Every check is worth of 1 hour work that is 7 euros. The checks are sent to you and now all you have to do is hire a person to do what ever you need: cleaner, caretaker, plumber, painter etc. You think why would you hire someone for 7 euros, actually it is even less that that. You see, the government gives certain percent back for every check you used and the worker gets certain extra percent from every check he has earned. And finally we get a win-win situation. WIN 1 - job is done at my house and it was cheap, WIN 2 - no illegal workers, rate of unemployment goes down and people have health insurance. Of course this law only works in Belgium cause they are rich. Actually now they have another problem, the law turned out to be so popular that it has been eating a lot of money.
Ok, back to Antwerpen. We had a nice and interesting city tour with a guide. City got its name from a legend. How a giant didn't let anyone pass through on the river without paying tax. One guy stepped up and managed to cut giant's hand off and threw it in the river - hand werpen, in english it's hand throwing or to throw a hand = Antwerpen. After the city tour we had free time/lunch. And I went with couple more people to have chinese food where I got myself a new nickname: Spicy Boy. Cause I like spicy food and I told nice chinese waitress in her fifties to make my food extra spicy. When she got back with our lunch, she handed the plates by saying "this is for Spicy Boy". After lunch we went to the MAS - Museum Aan de Stroom. It's a new museum, built and opened in may 2011. The idea of the MAS is to present exhibits owned by Belgians. It means that all the exhibits are bought/used/brought by Belgians in the past. They have exhibits originally from Japan in the times of samurais, or exhibits owned by the great Mayas like sculptures and statues. You might think how it's possible, well many years ago Antwerpen was the first passing point to Western Europe. And after the MAS we went back to train station to catch a train back to Leuven. Next saturday we'll visit my soon to be new hometown Gent.
Two cool things I wanted to add:
1. Antwerpen's train station works on different levels. And from the atrium you can see all those levels/floors full of trains. And in 2009 American magazine Newsweek judged Antwerpen-Centraal the world's fourth greatest train station.
2. There's a tunnel for pedestrians connecting each sides of the river and it's 527m long and 31m under the ground.
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