Borgerhout, Ekeren, Hoboken, Merksem and Deurne – part of one big city of Antwerp, now a city with more than 500,000 inhabitants. All the former towns became "districten (in Dutch)" of Antwerp. Many city services were centralised and the town (district) council lost almost all of its powers. Every district kept its own districtshuis (former town hall) with services like: information, social affaires, registry of births, deaths and marriages, etc. However, this move to a centralised administration created some resistance among the inhabitants. In a gesture "to bring the government back to the civilians" a decentralisation was started on January 1, 2001. Some of the powers reverted to the districts, including: the "look" of the town, youth policy, festivities, sports and communication. Lange Wapper Lange Wapper is a mythical being appearing in many folk tales in Flanders. According to belief (especially from people living in Wilrijk) Lange Wapper was born in Wilrijk, near the Hoven van plaisantie De Brandt and Middelheim on the fields of farmer Peer-January. One day he found a huge red cabbage between his vegetables. He touched it, and found out that it was actually a newborn. Because he was too poor to raise the child, it was adopted by a family from Antwerp. The boy grew up, and he became known as someone who always protected the helpless. One day he saved an old lady from drowning and she gave him the gift to make himself very tall or very small whenever he liked it. This is how he got his name Lange (Long) Wapper. Since he always protected people he got some respect, but he also made some strange noises, sounding like a goat, and that's why he also became known as a water devil. Since people in Wilrijk wanted to make sure the entire world would believe that Lange Wapper really was theirs, they organised a great party in 1964 to baptise an 8 meter long giant, Lange Wapper, with beer in the presence of a monk from Deerlijk. After that the giant was officially made an inhabitant (honoris causa) of Wilrijk by mayor Kiebooms. This, of course, created only more discussion between the center of Antwerp and Wilrijk about who actually "owned" Lange Wapper. He is one of the main figures of the Goat parade in Wilrijk. Cultural activities Goat parade (Geitestoet) In the period that Wilrijk was still a poor town, many