Dear reader,
I started today my search about the true content of suitcase 92, by a visit to the main railway-station of Antwerp, the Central Station, which is located at less than 80 km of my residence.
This is a very large and beautiful building, constructed around 1900, but recently a lot of huge restorations were applied to the original construction, in order to enhance the train traffic by adding lower-levels.
Even if the main part of the restoration is done, they are still a lot of scaffoldings everywhere, keeping some areas out of any public investigation.
My goal was to find the bathes of the station where Tulse was kept as a prisoner. I was first rambling around, trying to find any clue by myself, with no results. Then I asked to a gracious lady, person in charge at the info office, who left me after a few explanations with a venerable doorkeeper, supposed to be the living memory of the station!
The ancester lead me silently thru a dedaleous succession of inner corridors and majestic lifts to the very heart of the station, at level -1 ½…
Opening a last door with an impressive high-security key, the man gave me finally access to… the shower room of the technical staff, a miserable, apparently barely used, but above all desperately recent corner build in 2003!
The doorkeeper was very kind, and answered to all my questions. He never heared about any old bath-room of the station. During our way back to the surface, he was questionning a few other employees, all the answers were negative.
A failure as a first attempt is a very common result for a professional researcher. In a couple of days I will learn more about the Central Station of Antwerp, at the Department of the Historic Monuments of Belgium.
Daniel Capelletti
Head of Research of the Global Connected Research Union