№49 — Eindhoven and Antwerp
I have an app on my phone that lets me track all the countries I have visited, which is not the most useful app but quite fun to compare with other well-travelled friends. However, I had one huge blank spot which all of my friends seem to have visited: the Netherlands and Belgium. I decided to change this.
When one thinks of those two countries, two cities come to mind — Amsterdam and Brussels. Since each of them is worth a weekend trip on its own, I decdied to visit two less touristic cities in both countries. After some research and the limitations on time Peter, my travel buddy, and I had, we settled for Eindhoven and Antwerp. The latter is even in Lonely Planet’s Top 10 cities to visit in 2018.
Late on a Friday afternoon, Peter and I set off in a rental car to visit the first town on our trip, Eindhoven. If you ever go there, do not expect much and your expectations will be met. While it must be a nice town to study at the TU Eindhoven or work for the local industry giant Philips, it is not worth going there as a tourist. We did anyway and went stratight to one of the most important sights there — a bar which offers a selection of over 1000 beers, which we extensively inspected. Hear me out when I tell you to never say yes if the waitress asks you if you want your beer warm. Just does not go down well.
As we hardly saw anything else apart from that bar on Friday, we decided to have a walk around town. Luckily, the local tourist agency has prepared a few walking maps that guide you through town. It took us two hours to see everything, which was just enough time to bridge the gap between getting up and the Philips museum opening — the definite highlight of the visit. The museum tells you the story of the industrial company Philips from their humble beginnings as a lightining bulb manufacturer to a world-class corporation. Very entertaining if you are interested in industrial history and a must-see if you ever got lost and happened to end up in Eindhoven.
After our visit to the museum, we decided we have seen enough and went on with our trip to visit Antwerp. After overcoming my initial confusion regarding the insane number of jewelers around our hotel — it was located one block away from the Antwerp Diamond Center, location of one of the greatest diamond heists of all time — we set off to explore the city. Apart from diamonds, Antwerp is also known for supplying a large portion of Europe with all kinds of imported goods through its huge harbor. Following the theme of industrial development of this trip, we decided to take a two hour boat tour through the harbor, which barely showed us anything of the area due to its sheer size.
Coincidentially with our visit, Antwerp hosted a festival of food and music within the city center. Everywhere there were stages, bars and food stands — I had delicious mussels, some random fried food, the obligatory Belgian fries and washed everything down with tasty Belgian beer. Lonely Planet did not lie — Antwerp is definitely a city you can visit for a weekend.
On the way back to Düsseldorf, I dropped Peter off in Aachen for a softball match. Right next to Aachen is the highest point of the Netherlands, an opportunity for acclimatization to enourmous heights I could not forgo in light of my upcoming attempt to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro. Thus, we embarked on this trip up the impressive Vaalserberg, towering the surrounding countryside at 322.4 meters. If you are thinking about going as well, don’t if you do not happen to be in Aachen anyway.
A sidenote: if you ever want to see what a really, really big hole looks like, stop at a viewpoint overlooking the Tagebau Hambach. It really gives you an impression at what cost to the environment electric power comes.
