The Sint-Annatunnel connects the left bank of the Schelde River with the right. It was built in the 1930's around the same time New York was building the Lincoln Tunnel and Detroit was building a tunnel to Canada. Tunnels were a thing. But while those American tunnels were strictly for cars, the Sint-Annatunnel was built for walkers and cyclists.
I'm staying at a campground on the left bank. In the morning, I decide to ride my bike into Antwerp. It's rush hour, so the elevator down to the tunnel is crammed with bike commuters: little kids in their school uniforms, business guys in suits with their pant legs rolled up, and tough grandmas wearing their game faces. Everyone watches one another out of the corner of their eyes as the elevator descends. Sizing up the competition. When the door slides open, the crowd crashes into the the tunnel in a crazy confusion of arms and legs and bike parts.
The grannies take the lead, elbowing past the school kids and sending them wobbling into the walls. The tunnel echoes with the buzz of freewheels and the clatter of cranks. The riding is so fast and furious that I feel like I've stumbled into a bike race. Everyone is trying to unseat the reigning grand champ of the morning commute-- one of the old ladies who's probably wearing the yellow jersey under her cardigan. I fall in with the stragglers: a guy with a cast on his arm, and a little girl whose rear tire is nearly flat.
The peloton bolts through the tunnel and piles into the elevator waiting at the far end. Then everything goes quiet till the next wave of commuters blasts out of the elevator behind me. The tunnel is like some giant cyclist-powered piston. The one-cylinder engine that Antwerp is powered by. read more