Potatoes in the Air

First of all, apologies for the lateness of our second post, it has been a hectic few weeks of preparation for our first Heritage Hunt in Antwerp. We’ve had many things to keep us busy in the last 3 months but this was the first big event that me and the other members of The “Dream Team” have had to organise. What is it you may be wondering? I like to think of this as our version of a guided city tour just with a fancier name. But as the name suggests, it is a quest of a city, delving into various stories of the past. With Antwerp, we focused on the theme of the word, the poor, culture and heritage. The places we visited held some significance of Antwerp’s past in one of these themes. For example, the Grote Markt (Grand Market) holds the Town Hall and the Brabo statue which is very important historically, where the Rubenshuis plays a
great significance culturally.

Second item on the agenda, we should all get better acquainted. If you’ve read our last post, made by the lovely Assgthiek, I’m sure you would now have a pretty good idea of who we are and what we do, right? Anyhow, I’m Paul, one of the 9 interns here at Atlantic Bridge and I will be working along side Asgthike and Hadi, taking you along with us on our journey. Talking about journeys, living in London meant that it was very easy for me to travel here, although even with the short distance there’s nothing easy about living in another country, especially for such a long duration. It’s not so much the culture shock as most people would assume with travelling or living in overseas that I find difficult, definitely not for my case as I can say that I have not felt a culture shock. It does help that everybody here speaks English and also the fact that I’m living with a group of other internationals, so I suppose in away the culture doesn’t really creep in as much as if say, you were to live in Dutch family and speaking (or trying to speak) Dutch only, and eating Dutch food. Having said this I have learned so much about the culture already and it was a good surprise to discover that my perceptions of the Dutch were way off. In all fairness, it has been a smooth transition to come here, although I will never get used to living somewhere with only 4000 population and of course, the lingering smell of potatoes in the air, but hey, how else would you know you’re home!