1 a : the arrangement of actors and scenery on a stage for a theatrical production
b : stage setting
2 a : the physical setting of an action (as of a narrative or a motion picture) : context b : environment, milieu Origin of MISE-EN-SCÈNE: French mise en scène First Known Use: 1833
Sourced: Merriam Webster Dictionary
My life is busy ... it’s kind of action-packed. And if it’s not action-packed, then my mind in one of those really really busy ones.
Mostly, I believe, my life is like this because I like it that way however there are days when I just run in the brick wall of tiredness & confusion.
My body goes along with me for so long and then, voila ... it just gets cross with me.
So yes, I can zip over to Ireland, drive for the first time in 7 years, traveling over 500kms from east to west and then back in 4 days. Go fishing, go boating (and find out I'm not good on boats), climb up the side of a small mountain to visit an extraordinary church, and spend those few days in a house full of delightful Scottish people ... and their accents.
I can have an Australian Blue Heeler dog run into my legs at the speed of sound and I can attempt to walk the resulting pain out but ... I believe it was about there that my body started rebelling. The ankle swelled, it was painful all the rest of that day. Less painful on waking, it continued with the attention-seeking swelling. I ignored it. It persisted.
Brussels Airport taught me a lesson about asking for help, when perhaps it was too little, too late. So the ignored swelling went crazy and made me quite the miserable creature, with nothing but that long corridor in front of me.
Yesterday I did stuff I don’t remember ... but I did stuff. Really. There was laundry and dinner and answering emails and stuff.
Then came today, and I had the most hilarious appointment. I do love my Belgian friend, Ruth. She’s a writer who has just finished her first book (which went on to win the Gouden Meeuw award in 2011) but more on that when she has copies for sale. Anyway, there was this thing she needed me to do today ... this thing that I can’t write of without smiling . She needed a photograph of herself. She had a plan. She needed me to photograph her up on a roof with a book. Not her book but anway ...
I couldn’t resist. I started taking photographs the moment she got on the ladder, wearing her cute little gumboots pictured below. Then there was this moment ... captured while she was between the ladder and the roof.
And later, when she was climbing down, I’m fairly sure I would have stopped taking photographs in time to catch the ladder as it fell ... had she not stopped it with her feet.
Yes, I’m sure I would have.
We recovered over coffee and her delicious homemade blueberry muffins. I left the house with far more than I arrived with, including a signed copy of her book! Dank u wel, Ruth, for picking up my tired self, making me laugh, then filling me up with delicious food and good coffee.
Meet Ruth, or some of her.
Yesterday, at the really friendly airport of Dublin, we booked a wheelchair or buggy ride for Brussels. Just to get me through the long long, unbelievably long trek, from the plane to pick up our luggage. I was okay with doing the rest on my own but had a bad feeling that the trek from the plane wouldn’t be the greatest plan.
We arrived and ... well unsurprisingly really, writes the voice of past experience with Brussels Airport, there was no one waiting . It was a hell of a walk through a largely deserted 8.30pm airport.
No-one anywhere, to even say ‘ummmm excuse me, we booked assistance?’
Limping through, tediously slowly, we found our luggage and wandered over to the money machine to get money. Our hourly bus to Antwerpen was already going without us at 9pm. We were too slow with the limping thing but voila, just to make things more glorious, the money machine was out of cash.
I knew where another machine was and so we picked up our luggage and trundled on out. A bit tired and sore, you can imagine how rapt we were to discover the second money machine was out of cash too. My Belgian bloke was fuming ...
There was a third machine and it had money.
We stopped at Information to ask why we hadn’t received the assistance we had booked. I had warned Gert not to go there. It’s a path to self-destruction and rage. Last time I landed there, just a few weeks earlier, the luggage handlers had slammed my suitcase around, the ensuing damage jamming my suitcase closed, with my coat inside. They had also managed to lose my big strong luggage strap. My enquiries had begun at ‘Information’ too. I was sent around the airport, being told ‘no, not here, we're not responsible, try there’, until I risked missing my hourly bus home to Stad Antwerpen. Again, this guy had no answers beyond naming the group responsible before adding ‘but they’re closed now’.
Smiling kind of grimly, I asked where the best place to eat was.
He said, they’re all closed.
International airport ... people still arriving and leaving ... food places closed, 9pm.
We rolled the case over to a bar and ordered a horrendous panini thing each, with a beer and a wine ... 23euro. Then as we sat there the staff, assuming we were both English-speaking, called the previous customers pigs on arriving at their table. Not because of the mess but because the customers had wanted a lemon slice in their drink then not finished the drink. I suspected it was undrinkable, based on the sandwiches.
I looked inside my crunchy brie panini, the over-toasted one, and saw a pile of meat. I asked the guy waiter what it might be, not rudely, just kind of bemused that my brie panini wasn’t really.
He laughed, looking at me like I was slightly insane, he said, I only the sell the stuff, I don’t know what is in it.
And that was coming home from Ireland ... maybe it's better to land over in Holland and catch the trains home.
I often travel alone ... I’m lucky, the man who found me in Istanbul accepts that a New Zealander living in Turkey might be a bit of a wanderer.
But sometimes he travels with me however I can’t always blog all about that while on the road. It’s the kind of information burglars might rather enjoy. There’s the whole google face recognition thing these days and so, when I travel with my Belgian, he’s often not mentioned and it’s sad because I do enjoy traveling with him.
This trip to Ireland was special in so many ways. He had decided he wouldn’t be driving. Instead, he had hired an Irish rental car and it was all about me getting back behind the wheel after 7 years as a passenger.
It has to be said, I loved driving back in New Zealand. Loved it with a passion! Friends visiting New Zealand can attest to that, although I would rather they didn’t critique my style here. Yes, that means you Diede, and perhaps Mary Lou too.
Anyway ... I was a little bit nervous about it all. 7 years is a long time.
The rental car bloke in Ireland said, ‘so you’re okay with a 2011 Peugeot 308?’ I think I gave him a wee bit of a fright. I didn’t hug him but I might have said, ‘I’ve only just arrived in Ireland and here I am, having a really excellent time!!!’ He almost smiled, which we felt was an event, as Gert and I weren’t sure he smiled a lot normally. It was possibly the equivalent of a hearty laugh from a more easily amused bloke.
We trotted out and loaded up the car. Gert had maps. He’s great with maps. I’m not. I never know where I am in the world. I accept that.
We did all kinds of M Roads on our journey from Dublin Airport across to Galway, over there on the other side of Ireland. It was grand. I had imagined I would sit around 90kms p/h in the slow lane in those places where the speed limit was 120kms but do you know, it all came back to me. 120kms was okay. Gert liked my driving. He’s a Flemish bloke. He’s fairly blunt when it comes to truth-telling.
And we timed it nicely. His directions were excellent. I didn’t drive him crazy, not once. A miracle.
Anyway, we arrived in one piece at the home of the lovely Rob and Angie and just kind of stepped into this magical time of wandering and boating and fishing and stuff, in Ireland.
I took this photograph of Gert fishing ... but that’s a whole other story, involving trees and fish and things.
Maurizio Carnevali was one of ten international artists creating a Brussels-themed sculpture in Brussels recently. I wandered by, with Paola, on Saturday and could have spent hours attempting to capture something of the artists and their work… then came the rain.
This is the artwork created by Italian sculptor, Maurizio Carnevali during the 1st Brussels International Sculpture Symposium.
The symposium took place between 2nd and 16th July and was rather stunning. Ten artists, of international reknown, created a Brussels-themed sculpture in Park Parmentier, Sint-Pieters-Woluwe.
I only arrived on that last day, as finished sculptures were revealed, artists were thanked, and champagne was poured. Thanks for letting me tag along, Paola. A lovely outing despite the rain.
I’ve been busy and I have had no idea how to write of it all.
Perhaps I should blog a story of each day because I know I have missed telling some beautiful stories along the way. I saw it begin to happen back in the Genova. I dropped the ball when it came to some of the every day beauty of people and place. There was the time I wanted to save the story of eating at Chichibio with Stefano until I could tell it beautifully ... but it slipped away in the cascade of the life I lived there.
It’s not too late though, and if you are ever in Genova and want someplace where you can enjoy exquisite food in elegant surroundings, I would suggest you hunt down Chichibio at via David Chiossone 20R. You can phone for a reservation on 010 247 6191. Not to be missed. And, as always, I followed Stefano’s advice when ordering and had not one single regret.
Grazie, Stefano ...a long overdue grazie.
Then, on Thursday, I was up and out the door with Gert. Well, that was the intention however, he did ask me if I had my 10-ride train ticket for the big trip to Leopoldsburg and perhaps I didn’t ...
So I set out again, scarf and train-ticket packed, arriving in plenty of time to board my departing-hourly train and blogged my fabulous Wednesday from the train. Destination reached, my lovely lovely friend, Judy, met me there with her car and over coffee we agreed, Maastricht was the destination. I had heard rumours of book stores ... rumours whispered to me by Judy, who just happens to love books as much as me, if not more.
We started out in Selexyz Dominicanen, which has to be seen to be believed. It is housed in a most unexpected space, a cathedral full of books, with a coffee-selling cafe up the back ... seemed like heaven to me. I was disappointed with their selection of English books but then again, I’m not the easiest reader to please and have been spoilt by De Slegte, my favourite secondhand bookshop in Antwerpen. It seems the English-reading Antwerpenaars and I are compatible.
After exploring Selexyz Dominicanen, Judy and I wandered off into the streets of Maastricht, making our way to the secondhand bookshop, De Slegte, Maastricht ... hooray. And it was there that the wheels fell off Di’s Intention to be a Good and Frugal Wife. No really huge crimes were committed. There was a beautiful book titled Venice is a Fish, a sensual guide by Tiziano Scarpa - a Venetian poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist. And a couple of others. Under 20 euro altogether ...
If books are my heroin, then I think we could view this visit to my ‘supplier’ as hopeful in terms of managing my addiction.
It would have been more positive were I not currently intent on roaming the ‘Roads to Santiago with Cees Nooteboom. A beautiful book ... exquisite. I think you might really enjoy this one Shashikiran.
But back to Thursday ... so Judy took me over to the river Maas, after book-shopping, to a beautiful little cafe on the edge of the water. She wanted to show me that Maastricht really wasn’t in Luxemburg, Germany or Austria (silly kiwi girl), and it takes its name from the River Maas. This river Okay?
Okay ... I get it now. Mostly.
Happy, we drove back across the border and into Belgium for dinner, where we devoured the most excellent pizza I’ve had in a while. Dank u wel to Judy ... it was a lovely day in a lovely place with a lovely person. And the pizza, a thank you to Willy too.
Back in Antwerpen, and waiting for a very tardy tram 10, on the very day that Belgium was having its coldest 14 July since records began back in the 1860s. It was an unexpected 12-14 celsius, with rain. No one else there at the city tramstop was prepared for the summer plunge. We were all very sad and grouchy.
Friday came along and was a slow day, where I caught up on housework and photo-processing. There was a wee Nana-nap in the afternoon, some lovely Chianti in my evening ...
4.30am Saturday morning.
I should have been sleeping. I wasn’t.
I tried but no, that was me, still awake when the alarm went off at 6.30am.
A mad dash, my bag packed (more or less), running from the house at 7.15am. I was on my way to Brussels to visit with a lovely family ... or two.
I’ve been enjoying my recent adventures to parts of Brussels I’ve never been in. Yes, it’s less compact than Antwerpen, difficult to navigate in some ways but those little villages within the city, like Ixelles and Stockel are so very worth visiting.
I was at Paola’s by midday and off on whole other adventure. An international group of sculptors, a presentation of their work to the city ... champagne, red wine, lovely nibbles, excellent company and enough space in the big open-sided tent when the heavens opened and the rain poured down.
Evening came and it was a girls night in ... a multi-national private event with excellent conversations. Oh, and the most delicious selection of food, accompanied by yet more champagne and red wine.
Bliss ... just the 4 of us.
I arrived home today, using that first class train ticket that only costs 4euro more return on the weekend. I love first class.
Now I’m just waiting for tomorrow morning ... for breakfast and a Nespresso.
I love my Nespreso machine.
Tomorrow ... the story of the machine. You might want to find someone else to read, just in case I lose myself in Gollum-like mutterings ... my precious, my precious, drool, and etc.
Oh ... and I had the pleasure of spending quite some hours hanging out with this sweet little man this weekend.
Note to reader: The words ‘delicious’, ‘delightful’ and ‘lovely’ are used often in this post. Just so you know …
Yesterday was one of those delicious days I don’t want to forget but today finds me train-traveling to Leopoldsburg, with no time to sit down and savour my yesterday howevere I have packed my tiny blue travel laptop and so, here I am, writing from the train.
But perhaps it didn’t begin yesterday. It began months earlier, when a woman called Karla wrote me a note enquiring about family photo-shoots. It didn’t work out then but later it did.
And the shoot was so much fun. There was the pleasure of meeting the loveliest family, photographing the baby with the bluest eyes, hanging out with a friendly black labrador … stuff like that.
We stayed in touch, worked out a date for the photographs to be picked up and voila, we arrive at my yesterday.
Karla came over, toting her beautiful blue-eyed baby, accompanied by this lovely Irish woman who brought her very own chuckling bundle of delightful baby boy. Really chuckley … I can’t emphasise how delicious his giggle is. I’ll photograph him one day, it’s written all over his face when he laughs.
We sat down at my kitchen table, with tea and coffee, and talked, in that intense and delicious way that strangers sometimes do and voila, my marvellous yesterday had begun.
We looked through the photographs first, we learnt something of each others lives, I was introduced to my very first colour therapist and did I mention … we TALKED.
The babies played while we toyed with new ideas for each others lives and businesses. There was that delightful click of like-minded souls meeting, it’s something that always amuses me. While right-wing populist politicians work at making us fear ‘the other’, there we were, as is more often the case, finding connections across 3 different cultures and histories.
Karla and Marcia didn’t really know Antwerp at all and so we wandered into the city for a lunch. I couldn’t resist and despite rain, I introduced them to my most favourite square here … Hendrik Conscienceplein … created by the Italian Jesuits, it soothes my soul sometimes.
We stopped in at the soup cafe, Comme Soupe, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s tiny but the soup is a truly satisfying work of art. I should have taken a photograph but I will return there, I promise.
Tiny cafe + two pushchairs meant that we didn’t like to stay longer than need be but afterwards, we crossed the small space to the Cupcake Cafe called Lojola Coffee and Cake, at Hendrik Conscienceplein 14. Oh my, if in Antwerp, you must pop in.
We chose divine little cupcakes to compliment our coffee and we were happy. Delighting perhaps, in the dollhouse-like playfulness of that little cafe. Mmm, photographs to follow.
And it was almost 4pm … so suddenly.
We said our goodbyes in the city, and off I wandered on my next big adventure. The buying of the Nespresso coffee machine. Just the espresso part … inspired by a desire to avoid future pain when searching the city for good espresso. Genova and her beautiful coffees ruined me.
I felt childlike but I don’t think they knew in the shop. Remember that feeling of having that birthday money clenched in your hot little hand as you marched off to buy that thing that you really truly wanted, forever? It was like that.
I chatted with the woman in the busy Nespresso store, staffed by many. She had been in Australia.
You know, the more years I am away from New Zealand, and realising both my brothers are married to Australians and living there, the more I feel that we downunder people are fairly similar and there is no insult in mistaking me for an Aussie.
Beaming, and still feeling like a small excited kid, with my coffee machine bagged up and in my hand, I boarded a tram home and had this nice looking guy beckoning to me, wanting me to sit with him. Gert and I had managed, quite by chance, to find the same tram to ride home.
Well yes, he did have to suffer quite some Chitter-Chatter by Di on the way home.
I didn’t dare caffeinate myself after dinner. Chitter chatter on a tram after work is one thing, he can do it … just. Chitter-chatter at 3am, of the over-caffeinated kind, is something else. I had my first little espresso this morning and it was good.
Lately, life has been all about intensely good friends and meeting lovely people. Thanks guys.
Anyway, you see it, yesterday was a very good day…
And I mean loving watching the story of this family unfold but ‘so loving’ also captures something special about this family ...
It’s been busy lately, for weeks and months really ... an odd kind of unpredictable busy but these last 24 hours or so have felt slightly exceptional. Full of good people, but exceptional.
Sunday afternoon found me feeling unwell. I tried sleeping it off but only succeeded in messing up my ability to sleep that night. Monday, I was up, on 4 hours of sleep. I was heading for Brussels and had it all mapped out in terms of train times and which tram to catch to this new part of the city.
My idea was that, somewhere along the way during the day, I would find myself a really good espresso for strength.
I arrived at Antwerp’s Central Station with not enough time to join the queue that had formed in the coffee place. I wasn’t prepared to have just any old coffee, I needed a really good espresso. This much I knew.
No coffee ... I had no sooner settled on the train than I heard the conductor announce that this train would not be stopping at North Station ... my destination. Okay, it said it would on the website but it wasn’t and so ... I climbed off in Mechelen to catch something else. As I was waiting, a young man came sprinting up the stairs, just missing the Brussels-bound train I had left. He threw his bag down angrily. I waited a moment and mentioned the fact it wasn’t stopping at north station and then, voila, we ended up chatting a while.
His English was impeccable. He was a student on his way to a mathematics exam but better than that, he was studying law and politics. After talking of his year in Australia, we boarded the next train, held our breath while it tried to break down and the train guy announced that it had ... before it suddenly and successfully pulled out of the station. We talked about Belgian politics all the way there. Interesting, so interesting, as we head into a second year without a government since the last elections.
We said our goodbyes, I wished him luck although he was very relaxed about it all, and I wandered off to spend some time with the loveliest family over there in the big Belgian city. They had a son with the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen and a delicious black labrador, as per the photograph below. Anyone who knows me will know how I’ve been yearning for a labrador here in my Belgian life but never mind, it was enough to get a bit of a dog-fix for now.
After time spent in the park, the lovely family dropped me off on a tram that would get me back across the city more quickly however ... they assumed they were dealing with a normal adult who had a reasonable knowledge of Brussles. I was ‘misplaced’ for a while but amused. It’s never really that serious and getting unlost usually makes me laugh at myself. I climbed off at Parc and found Central Station by some weird kind of instinctive luck.
I NEEDED a coffee by now. But every place in the station, open at 3.30pm, looked like a place that make rubbish coffee. I know ... it’s about me being a brat but I’m still readjusting to life after the exquisite Genovese espresso.
I bought sparkling water, sadly, washing down the brie baguette thingy for lunch and boarded the train home ... falling asleep along the way.
By the time I reached Antwerp Central Station I NEEDED a coffee. I wandered into Starbucks, hoping their espresso was at least decent, as I can’t stand their other coffees. I followed the queue of people waiting, right to the end and voila, I was at the other exit door, so I exited. Tram home, falling asleep, aching.
Made it home and found it full of Miss 7 and her mum.
Dinner was cooked by my very kind husband.
Miss 7 was storied up and put to bed,then I couldn’t resist downloading and going through some photographs.
Getting late, I wanted to do one last check of the wedding photographs, before burning the 1,000 to dvds for the different bride friends who have been patient as I’ve sprinted through life since their weddings.
I fell into bed.
Jess phoned, ‘How is Miss 7?’
‘Okay’, I replied.
‘Okay ... good’, she tells me ‘but keep an eye on her because I’m vomiting’.
‘Oh ... she did say she had a sore tummy, I thought she didn’t want to sleep’.
1.32am ... Miss 7 starts vomiting.
I’m so tired. The only solution seems, in that moment, to carry her bedding and put it next to my bed.
I do it. I almost fall down the stairs doing it and ponder how nasty that would have been as I continue down.
We sleep until 3.23am when she vomits.
We sleep until 6.20am when she vomits again.
I consider this an uncommonly civilised kind of vomiting, as usually sleeping between bouts is all but impossible.
Morning finds me here at the computer. Miss 7 on the couch, watching tv, drinking powerade slowly, sleeping a little ...
So it has been an active few hours, and then some, but by crikey ... I did meet some truly lovely people. And a really nice dog.
The World Cup Bike Trials are on here in the city ... there were some stunning things being done on bikes.
This is what it’s all about ...
Stunning!
So maybe I should get a nine to five
But I don’t want to let it go, there’s so much more to life
Tom Dice, extract from Me and My Guitar
There was me, the New Zealander with dual citizenship feeling the Belgian part of my identity, watching Tom Dice, my favourite new singer, competing in Eurovision 2010.
I ended up watching the show by accident ... only to find myself on the edge of my seat, as Tom slid up and down the placings from 1st to 6th.
But I love this song ... the ultimate artist’s song surely.
I love the way we can bring the past alive in our present ... recalling the people we loved and lived with, the way that they made us feel. I find everyone is still there, solid memories, whenever I manage to call them up.
7am here in Italy, a cup of coffee from my travel coffee-pot and a packet of Italian shortbread-like biscuits ...voila, I find memories of Nana and pre-breakfast coffees back home at her place, in Invercargill, New Zealand. Us chatting as she sped through her daily Southland Times, reading the news.
If we could have imagined the future ... ‘Hey Nana, in 2010 I’m going to be sitting at Paola’s kitchen table, in a small and ancient city in Italy, window open so I can hear the sounds of the city waking, drinking coffee, just like you and I are now.’
Nana, who never left New Zealand in all of her life. I wonder if she dreamed of it. We never talked of those things.
Or a conversation with Mum ... ‘So I moved to Istanbul in 2003. You would have loved it! The people are so friendly, the summers are warmer than here in Mosgiel, the life ... Come with me?
Then Belgium in 2005 and mum would have flown in. Creating a garden on that first balcony in Antwerp. And then she would have spent evenings out there, ignoring the mosquitoes, drinking white wine and watching as the sun slipped below the horizon.
Genova. I’m sure she would have refused to leave Genova. We would have laughed about me being my mother’s daughter perhaps, with a need for the sea and serious hills, and maybe we could have planned opening some kind of B&B here, satisfying our oddly hospitable souls and the pleasure we find in knowing people.
And my lovely little sister ... the one who has always been older and wiser, even if she was born after me. We used to talk across the space between our single beds, back in those days when we shared a room. If we had imagined my future life we would have been guilty of inventing wild and untrue tales ... ones where Istanbul, Antwerp and Genova were flights of fanciful imaginations. Impossible dreams.
She needs to come here now. I need her in my life.
But Genova ...!
Did you know that swallows fly up and down Via Lorenzo, screeching like hysterically happy young girls playing chase at an out-of-control birthday party. They amuse me, those swallows, even as I realise I can't begin to caputre their antics with my camera.
And do you know how it sounds to wake to the sounds of a cafe directly below your bedroom window? The clatter of cups and saucers and everyday Italian conversations that fly in through my window. The one that is open behind still-closed green shutters, just across the room.
Did you know that this woman, a few thousand miles from home, from past lives, from the people she first loved, finds this Ligiurian city an exquisitely beautiful place to remember and miss them?
Church bells ring in through the open window ... 8am.
Time to begin the new day but Sandra ... come over one day soon.
Ciao from Genova, both feet in the present, as I think what to do with this day.
Nina’s Ornamental blog is the place I wander to when I’m in need of that feeling I found in New Zealand.
I used to live in this funny little cottage with huge windows on the edge of a harbour, and I had a beach for each mood back in Dunedin. And there was a creek my Labrador and I ran away to when we lived in the mountains beside Fiordland National Park. Lake Te Anau did just as well.
There was a tiny road that twisted and turned, taking us to a small bay in Marlborough Sounds while we lived on the Airforce Base in Blenheim, and there once was a place where the mighty Clutha River flowed into a smaller quieter side-stream and that became ‘our place’ while we were living in Cromwell ... although some days we’d throw off our responsibilities and race through the Kawara Gorge to visit the Arrow River in Arrowtown.
My dog was a wanderer too and travelled all over New Zealand with us. She died at 16.
I always had a special place and a dog in New Zealand. Here, in Belgium, I miss the wild peace of home. Just ‘being’ in Nature is far more difficult, perhaps because Nature is much less powerful by virtue of so many centuries of ‘civilisation’.
I’m looking for a golden labrador crossbred with some kind of sheepdog because I’ve had labradors since I was 9 and the best was a crossbreed.
Meanwhile I couldn’t resist parking my bike and taking this photograph because the scenery on the way from the new house to the old apartment is nothing to sneeze at ...
Tot straks from Belgium.
I had passed by Cafe Stanny on the train as I travelled to and from Brussels city, and I have slid by it via the Number 8 tram so many times but I had never quite managed to step off and visit its red and welcoming friendliness.
Today, I had no destination in mind, I was simply escaping a really bad day and so there was nothing to lose as I climbed off Tram 8 with my small travelling laptop.
Cafe Stanny’s lunch menu is diverse enough to offer something for everyone, with soups, breads with a range of fillings and things I can’t quite remember. I chose a most divine bacon and onion omlette for lunch and it came with a soft brown heavily-grained bread that was delicious.
The music indicates good taste (an important criteria when wandering, laptop in hand). The atmosphere, now that it is summer, is open door with benches both inside and out. The staff were friendly and the decor lovely - appealing and a tug on the strings of memory for this kiwi so far from home. A deep blue bar/counter with stools, and stools along the high tables at the two large windows in the front.
Back in winter, I remember being attracted to the warmth of Cafe Stanny’s red exterior and the promise of its fogged up windows, clients bicycles piled up outside calling to me in but I was rushing, always rushing through that stretch of the city between here and there, I never made time to detour a little.
Cafe Stanny’s is lovely, a new favourite of mine but come see for yourself.
It’s at Stanleystraat 1, 2018 Antwerpen, located on the Tram 8 line and close to Berchem Railway Station ... seen from the train on the left side as you pull into the station (I think).
You can’t miss the red.