Antwerp · Friday — Anchor Day: Underground and Cathedral

Day 4 · Antwerp

Friday — Anchor Day: Underground and Cathedral

Friday, July 24, 2026 Ruien Underground / Oude Stad

inside a vaulted brick tunnel corridor, walls curved and glistening with centuries of seepage, the ceiling pressing low — perhaps three meters above the stone floor — a single work lamp at the far bend casting orange light that dies before reaching her, the guide's silhouette ahead in that brightness, the rest absolute dark — lights just returned after darkness; she stands still, eyes adjusting, one hand not yet moved from where it gripped her own forearm in the dark

The tunnel smells like the inside of a well. Cold stone and standing water and something older underneath that I don't have a word for — not rot, not mineral, just the particular smell of water that hasn't seen light in several centuries.

There were four of us. I booked the early slot because I wanted the quieter version of everything, and that's what I got. The guide spoke Flemish and then translated into something between Dutch and English that I followed about eighty percent of. The other three were a couple who kept touching each other's arms and a man who wrote things in a small notebook with a mechanical pencil. I had nothing to write with.

At some point in a long section of tunnel, the guide turned the lights off.

Not dim. Off.

I wore the zip open the whole time — the tunnel was cold but not cold enough, and by the time he turned the lights off I'd forgotten I had a jacket at all. What I heard instead: water moving somewhere below the floor. Not dramatic movement. The sound of something continuing. The medieval city had rivers and then it built over them and kept building and now you can stand in the dark above a current you cannot see and hear it working its way out regardless.

I don't know what I expected. I think I expected to feel something about time. What I felt instead was the floor.

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the stepped-gable guild facades of the Grote Markt, stone the colour of dried clay, rising flat and even under overcast sky

Changed into the skirt outside the station toilets. The trousers felt wrong for the afternoon and I wanted to feel the air again after two hours underground. The overcast was holding. No shadows anywhere — the guild facades were flat and even and the color of dried clay.

I walked into the Oude Stad with no particular destination and found a counter place near a side street. Something with grey shrimp. A beer I didn't ask the name of. The couple at the far end were doing the same thing in different proportions.

at a narrow counter inside a small frituur or seafood stand on a side street off the Grote Markt, the counter worn pale wood, a single strip of warm tungsten mounted under the shelf above the server's station, the street visible through the open frontage behind her — guild-house facades in flat overcast grey framed by the counter opening like a painting she is not looking at — beer glass set down, small fork poised but lowered — she is watching something outside through the open front, not the shrimp, not the glass

Outside, by seven, the light was still flat. A pigeon was working methodically along the gutter in front of a closed pharmacy, checking the same two meters repeatedly.

plate of grey shrimp (grijze garnalen) on a white counter, a half-drunk Belgian blonde beer beside it

I kept the skirt. Swapped the shoes and the top, and the whole thing shifted just enough that it felt like a different decision entirely.

on the pavement in front of a closed pharmacy on a street in the Oude Stad, the pharmacy's shuttered green-painted window frame filling the left third of the frame, its painted cross dark and unlit, the stone pavement in front even and pale under flat late-afternoon overcast, a row of step-gabled guild facades receding at an angle to the right in muted dried-clay tones — stopped, not walking — she is watching the pigeon working the same two meters of gutter ahead of her; she has not decided whether to step around it or wait

The city above. The water below. Both still moving.

What she wore

day4-scene1

I wore the zip open the whole time — the tunnel was cold but not cold enough, and by the time he turned the lights off I'd forgotten I had a jacket at all.

day4-scene2

Changed into the skirt outside the station toilets — the trousers felt wrong for walking in afternoon sun, and I wanted to feel the air again after two hours in a tunnel.

day4-scene3

Kept the skirt — swapped the shoes and the top, and the whole thing shifted just enough that it felt like a different decision entirely.