“All you Need is Love“ that’s what one may hear on the radio since early morning . It’s chilly and rainy, but on Valentine’s Day nobody cares about grey sky above. Streets are crowded, full of men running in a hurry with roses and women looking for fancy gifts for their lovers. One can hardly find a free place in cinemas, restaurants or cafeterias. Every inch of the city is occupied by couples in love.
And how was my St. Valentine’s Day this year? Despite the fact that I spent it abroad, it looked really the same as at home. On February 14th it doesn’t make a difference if you are in Belgium or in Poland, or probably elsewhere. Perhaps this is a result of ongoing globalization. Apart from being a chance for expressing feelings, Valentine’s Day is a great occasion for companies to improve their profits, every product with a heart looks better this day than without it. And for sure it’s perfect for a gift, isn’t it?
But Valentine’s Day it’s just a background for the story which I would like to tell you. Imagine that you go for a walk without umbrella and you’re not a kind of lucky one, so of course it starts raining. There is no place to find a shelter from the rain – because of happy lovers sitting everywhere. So you walk, through the rain and it’s getting colder and colder when you’re soaking wet. You dream about some place where you can wait out till the change of weather. This is how my first day in Antwerp looked like. But then something unexpected happened.
I went into a narrow alley with shops and cafes. There, heavy, big, wooden doors with a black panther upon them caught my attention. Through a gap between them I could see a courtyard with a beautiful flora (now I know that this place is called Zwarte Panter). I walked inside, and found the entrance to an interesting exhibition.
Firstly, I went to the room resembling a chapel, with its high ceiling and stained-glass window. The walls were white and severe with a few paintings on them. Except a sculpture of two men and the dog, nobody else was there. I felt really strange in this mysterious place.
I moved forward and went to the second part of this exhibition. Suddenly, when I was admiring other paintings, a dog came to me. It started sniffing me, like dogs use to do. I paid no attention to it when another new figure appeared. It was a man who asked me if I enjoyed this place and what I think about the artist that made it. We talked for a while and he proposed me to visit the third part of gallery. To get there I had to go through a “chapel room” again and then cross the garden. When I was passing the sculpture one think came to my head. I realized that the dog which I mentioned before and the man who I talked just a moment ago were these from the sculpture! What a coincidence.
In all these astonishment, here comes a time for a cherry on the top. When I entered the garden I saw there the third person from the monument, the painter himself – Fred Bervoets. He was walking in hurry around this place, so I didn’t want to disturb him. Although, when he noticed me, he found a moment to tell me that he has to choose few works for another exhibition, and it’s the last day of this one. Lucky me that I found it!
I must admit that this gallery and the idea of mysterious, tale’s atmosphere made a big impression on me. This made my whole Valentine’s Day really interesting.