The folded note in my hand says **27, 26, 7**. Three numbers, one square. For a moment, it looks like the shortest itinerary I have ever written.
I copied the first address for practical reasons: Antwerpen-Centraal is at Koningin Astridplein 27. I added the other two because they were nearby, and because I have a weakness for plans that fit on a scrap of paper. Looking at the note now, I can no longer tell whether I meant to visit those places or merely reassure myself that I would have choices on arrival.
The train has done the uncomplicated part. I am at the station. My instructions are accurate. Neither achievement tells me what to do when I step outside.
### No. 27
An address is usually a promise to stop looking around. Find the number, find the door, put away the note. But 27 belongs to the station, so it has delivered me to the beginning of the question rather than its answer.
I pause before going out, with the paper still open. It would be easy to decide here, inside the logic of a journey already completed. A station has made sense of my movements so far: I arrived by train, and now I should leave it. The note seems to offer the next instruction in sequence. Twenty-six follows twenty-seven. The itinerary practically writes itself, provided I do not ask why I wrote it.
That is the trouble with a list of addresses. It can look purposeful long after its author has forgotten the purpose. I have no appointment at 26 and no particular craving to reach 7. I wrote down possibilities, then promoted them to instructions by folding the paper and carrying it on a train.
Outside, Koningin Astridplein makes the weakness of that method obvious. It is not just the patch of city between my arrival and some supposedly proper destination. The station has an address on the square; other places do too. I can choose one of them, or use the square to continue elsewhere. My neat three-number sequence has run into a place that does not recognise it as an itinerary.
### No. 26
Antwerp ZOO’s entrance is at Koningin Astridplein 26. On paper, the move from 27 to 26 is almost comically small. I look up from the note, less interested in counting my way there than in the strange effect of having a zoo entrance among my first options after a train arrival.
I do not go in. The name does its work without a visit: it interrupts my expectation that a station square will serve only people trying to leave it. Some arrivals are surely heading straight for that entrance. Others will have no interest in it. The same address can be a destination for one person and an irrelevant detail for the person beside them.
This is when a square becomes more useful than a list. Numbers tell me where places are; they do not tell me why anyone has come, or how long they intend to stay. Standing here with my folded scrap, I realise I have been treating the addresses as if each one must advance a single story—mine. The square has no reason to arrange itself around that story.
I keep the note out anyway. Having written 26 feels like a small obligation, though I could not say to whom. It is possible to be mildly embarrassed by your own stationery.
### No. 7
Chocolate Nation is at Koningin Astridplein 7, opposite the station. I had put a line under this number, which gives it an air of importance I cannot now justify. Perhaps the prospect of a place devoted to chocolate was enough. The note offers no further explanation, and I am not going to invent one on my own behalf.
I do not go inside here either. I had pictured the addresses as stops in an orderly progression, but 7 sends my attention back across the square towards the station I have just left. The route on paper was never much of a route. It was three ways of looking at the same arrival point.
There is an obvious joke available: arrive in Antwerp and choose between animals and chocolate. I am fond of an obvious joke, but it would be unfair to let it decide the city for me. I know the addresses and where they put my options; I do not know what either visit would be like today. A few minutes on the square cannot turn them into reviews.
What I *can* tell is that my first impression is being shaped by the choice itself. I expected to emerge from the station and begin looking for Antwerp. Instead, I am already in a place that asks how I want to encounter it. The station is not behind the experience, like an opening paragraph to skip once the story begins. Its address is part of the same square as the next possibilities.
I glance again at the three numbers. Nothing on the paper mentions how much time I have, what sort of attention I can manage, or whether I feel like committing to anything at all. I had mistaken a compact note for a thoughtful plan. The distinction matters most when the plan is yours and there is no one else to blame.
### The number I did not write down
There is another way forward from the square: Astrid premetro station. I had not put it on the note. It is not an attraction competing with 26 and 7, and that may be why I overlooked it. I had prepared myself to choose what to *see*, not whether to continue travelling.
The thought does not settle anything. I could take the premetro and let this square remain my first, brief encounter with the city. I could stay here a little longer and see whether one of the addresses becomes more persuasive when I stop reading it. Both choices are less tidy than the sequence I brought with me.
A useful arrival point gives a traveller somewhere to go next. Koningin Astridplein has done that, perhaps too well. The note is back in my hand, its crease soft from being opened and closed. I fold it along the same line and put it away. The premetro remains an option; for now, I am still on the square, with no number left to follow.
