| Belgium
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Belgium Travel Guide
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 A warm welcome to Belgium,
one of Europe's beautiful countries and founding member of the European Union. A
stay in to Belgium is not complete without an visit to the historic cities of
Antwerp and Bruges. Take a look around this Favorite City Guide by
clicking on the cities below, or make a hotel booking directly using the
booking.com link |
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| >> Antwerp << |
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Belgium is a low lying country on the
North Sea coast in Western Europe. With the majority of West European
capitals within 1,000 km of Brussels, the seat of both the European
Union and NATO, and a member of the long-standing international Benelux
community, Belgium sits at the crossroads of Western Europe. Its
immediate neighbors are France to the southwest, Luxembourg to the
south east, Germany to the east and the Netherlands to the north.
Belgium
consists of three regions, listed from North to South: the Dutch
speaking region Flanders in the north; Brussels within Flanders, a
bilingual region of the capital where both Dutch and French is spoken
and finally Wallonia in the south, a French-speaking region
incorporating a small German speaking region in the east near the
German border. Belgium is a densely populated country trying to balance
the conflicting demands of urbanization, transportation, industry,
commercial and intensive agriculture. It imports large quantities of
raw materials and exports a large volume of manufactured goods, mostly
to the EU.
Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in
1830. It was occupied by Germany during World Wars I and II and has
many war graves near the battle zones, most of them are around Ieper
(in English archaically rendered as Ypres, with Yperite another name
for mustard gas due to intensive use there in WWI). It has prospered in
the past half century as a modern, technologically advanced European
state and member of NATO and the EU. Tensions between the
Dutch-speaking Flemings of the north and the French-speaking Walloons
of the south have led in recent years to constitutional amendments
granting these regions formal recognition and autonomy. |
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Belgium
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