I pull out my Lonely Planet, turn to Places to Stay - Mid Range, approaching, as I am, middle age, and read "a sage choice is the Pension Cammerpoorte, tucked away in the fashion quarter". Well, we all like to consider ourselves sage and fashionable, so I dial the number. A guy picks up, says something in Flemish.
"Hi," I say in English, "I'm looking for a single room for tonight. Do you have one?" There's a pause at the other end. "Hello?"
"Yes?"
"Do you have a room?"
"Yes, there is a room."
"Is it en-suite, have a TV?"
"Yes."
Great. I book the room and tell him I'll see them later. I conclude my business then catch the train to Antwerp.
Antwerp is quite a discovery - graceful boulevards mix with medieval cobbled markets in a kind of Paris meets Amsterdam way - and I use the ever-reliable Planet map to guide me to the pension. I tend to prefer Lonely Planet over the Rough Guide series, which, like the character in Platform, I find infuriatingly smug and faddish.
I find Steenhouwersvest straat and walk along it, looking out for number 55. There's number 51, 53... but then I'm standing on a street corner. I cross and find myself looking at number 57. I walk around the corner - no 55 - turn back to face number 53, which, I register for the first time, is adjacent to a building site.
Number 53 is a snazzy fashion shop. "Excuse me," I say, setting my case down, "This may seem like a strange question, but where is number 55?"
"Next door," the assistant replies cheerfully.
"You mean the buidling site?" She nods. "Did there used to be a pension there?"
"Yes," she says, "a long time ago. They've knocked it down now."
"I can see that, thanks."
"There's a hotel around the corner," she says helpfully.
Fortunately this hotel still exists and has a room. After I check in, I try the number for the pension again but there's no answer. Belgian humour? Well it is the home of surrealism. A ghost hotel? I read somewhere that air traffic controllers sometimes still pick up radio traffic from the Battle of Britain bouncing about the clouds...
In any case it is only now that I flick to the front of the Planet and look at its publication date - April 2001.
Those damn surrealists: from the walls of The Museum of Contemporary Arts, Antwerp
2 comments:
I had a similar problem using an out-of-date Lonely Planet in India. We decided to go to one of the best restaurants in Udaipur... and found nothing there except an arrow painted on the wall with the name of the restaurant next to it. We followed the arrow's direction, and found another one. And another... about 2 miles later, having walked right out of town and halfway around the lake we found it, a sad shadow of its former self.
Did I already mention that Antwerp is one of my favourite places on earth? Thought so. I can probably furnish you with a local guide if you like, once he gets out of hospital
Yeah, love it. Though Ostend has the beech.... I really like Flanders - it's a kind of quirky backwater utterly off most people's radar that has been left to go in its own cool direction. There's a coffee table book I almost bought called the Lofts of Antwerp you might like...
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