Things to do in Belgium

Anyone entering Nieuwpoort via Kinderlaan will come across the remains of the World War II German Widerstandsnest Karthauserdünen.

In 1967, Ghent's municipal electric power plant was expanded with a brand-new building that housed three giant diesel engines.

The Abbey of Aulne was founded around 637 on the wooded banks of the Sambre. Golden years and disaster succeeded for centuries, but the French Revolution dealt the abbey the final blow.

Melle, near Ghent, was once the walhalla for flower and ornamental cultivation. Greenhouses, florist houses and horticultural businesses flanked the roads.

Ghent and Eeklo have been connected by railway line 58 since 1861. A year later, a railway bridge over the Schipdonk canal allowed travellers to travel further to Maldegem.

The German army fenced off the border between Belgium and the Netherlands from 1915 with a three-wire fence. Electric current of 2,000 volts was rushed through the middle wire.

A more than 100-year-old port crane waltzed around Antwerp's port docks until early this century.

When the Belgian King Leopold II visited the Paris World Exhibition in 1900, he was delighted by the Tour du Monde attraction, a colourful mix of Japanese towers, Chinese porticos and Hindu-style galleries. All the architectural styles of the Far East were mixed there.

A well-hidden pedestrian tunnel under the railway in Brussels, inaugurated in 1913, connects two branches of the Koninginnelaan.

Pont de l'Origine is one of the drawbridges along the old canal between Brussels and Charleroi.