Thursday, July 18, 2019...this was starting to feel like a routine now. Bus left at 10am. Of the three Belgian Journey cities, Antwerp (Dutch Antwerpen, French Anvers) was easily the closest so it didn't take as long as the last two.
We got there and we had to walk from the buses across this long overpass.
This is where all the people who didn't do the Belgian Journey started to arrive. There were no guided tours today, and we'd be disappearing into a much larger crowd than before...
At our hotels we got issued these "passports." There were certain spots in Antwerp we were supposed to hit up and get "visa stamps" from each one. The first was called the Belgian Food Moment, and it was at the end of that long walkway with the flags. This would be our lunch that day: Belgian fries and beef stew. Did you know that "French fries" were actually invented in Belgium? That's why there are restaurants all over serving "Belgian fries," which, along with waffles, are pretty much the country's national dish.
I washed down the fries and stew with some Pepsi Max. Even this was Tomorrowland-branded.
Second stop was called Let's Unite, where, in a central square known as Grote Markt (Dutch for "big market") everyone queued up to get their national flags issued. Most people wore these as capes from then on. And it's around here where the extreme diversity of Tomorrowland really started to hit me. This was not a rich-white-college-kids-only event...FAR from it! Thousands of electronic music fans from every corner of the world flock to Belgium in July, and I'm not just talking about "Western" countries, not by a long shot. I'll expound on this later.
This was Grote Markt. The flags were distributed under those pavilions in the distance.
Another item on the passport involved going to Hendrik Conscienceplein and making your own postcard (you and anyone with you gets your picture taken with one of those Tomorrowland models dressed up in fairy wings). Two others involved visiting the Antwerp Brewery company and a chocolatier. The lines for the brewery and chocolatier were prohibitively long, but the organizers knew this and were stamping everyone's passport who didn't want to spend 40+ minutes waiting. I was one of those.
The last item involved visiting a place called Vrijdagmarkt ("Friday Market") and watching a promotional "Book of Wisdom" video.
With everything stamped, I started the hike north from the Food Moment area toward a large building called MAS for the Belgian Party, something of a pre-party for the big event that would be starting the next day.
This is MAS. It's a museum of some sort.
This show was only a foretaste of what was to come. And just look at all those flags...that was only a tiny sampling of just how international this event was.
The DJs at this event were, I think, all Tomorrowland artists, giving us a bit of a preview of their upcoming shows that weekend.
They had some food trucks there--I got some kind of light salad from one Middle Eastern restaurant's truck--and of course beer. Just like in Tomorrowland itself, the beer was all Jupiler. There was a bar adjoining the party where I got some higher-quality beer and some occasional coffee.
I don't know how long the party went on. People took buses back to their hotels, or to DreamVille camping, at various points. At that point, Tomorrowland really was tomorrow...
Other articles in this series:
- Tomorrowland day 1 - Getting there & Welcome Drink
- Tomorrowland day 2 - Bruges
- Tomorrowland day 3 - Ghent
- Tomorrowland day 4 - Antwerp
- Tomorrowland day 5 - First Fest Day
- Tomorrowland day 6 - Second Fest Day
- Tomorrowland day 7 - Train World and Last Fest Day
- Tomorrowland day 8 - Final Thoughts and a Little More Brussels