Day 1: Antwerp

This month's fetish is travel.

I stumble into Antwerp via the central train station at 1:00 PM, local time, on Sunday, August 5th. Once outside, I admire the station's staggering, Harry-Potter-esque front facade, then turn around to find this:

Welcome to Antwerp!

Here's a better view of the train station itself:

I'm sure you get the idea. 

The hotel room isn't ready yet, because hotel rooms are never Ready Yet. Luckily - do you see that splendid green camel in the upper left corner of the photo above, gazing off into eternity, bearing a confusingly nude young man on his back? Follow his gaze and you'll find the Antwerp Zoo, one of the world's oldest. (I've also been to the oldest, which is in Vienna *preen*) What better place to kill a few disoriented, sleep-deprived hours? The animals don't care that you smell like international plane funk and wobble on your feet like a career drunk. All they care about is finding some goddamn shade, because it is 32 degrees celsius up in here, what the hell is going on. 

Yes, we have arrived from New York City, which is in the middle of a heat wave, to find Belgium in the hazy grip of - you guessed it - a heat wave. It's a good thing climate change isn't real, or we'd really be struggling, eh? 

The Antwerp Zoo houses many frens:

When will my son return from the war?

Some quite smol indeed:

Others smol, yet thicc:

Some sort of hamster-rabbit that only eats carbs

It is also, historically, the first zoo in the world to house an okapi, which, if I were given a choice of any animal in the world to ride into battle, just might be my selection: 

A horse-sized emo giraffe

After laughing at all these dumb animals - just kidding, they were freaking great, all of them, even those awful birds that look like hell's own dinosaurs and stare right into your soul - and napping extensively at the finally-Ready hotel room, it is time for...

...a beer served in a glass with a wolf on it in a bar covered head-to-toe with French bulldog paraphernalia.

Why all the Frenchie love, you might ask? Well, meet Billie: 

Billie wasn't one bit impressed by us, until, seeing our feeble entreaties to win his favor, the bartender approached, asked, "Do you want to make a friend?" and offered us a dog biscuit. This gained us Billie's attention and affection for exactly as long as it took him to eat it - fewer than five seconds. But oh, what a five seconds they were. 

Also found in this bar, though not pictured, was Angel, a Schipperke mix. "She was my ex-girlfriend's dog," explained her owner. "Now the girl is gone, but the dog has stayed." Angel looked like a small black fox with a curly tail and an ear-to-ear grin. "We are in the middle of a heat wave, so I am sleeping with a fan. But she sleeps in bed with me. She lies right in front of the fan, and thinks, how nice and cool! While I lie there and think, where is the cool air?" Questioned about her name, he replies, "It's funny, because to me, she is Satan." Demonstrating the fondly pejorative attitude I've found typical of European dudes with their dogs, he took his leave from us by announcing to Angel, "Come on, bitch, let's go outside, the beer's getting warm." She trotted happily beside him, glad just to be a part of his evening.