Finding Belgium on the Map

Belgium is located in Northwestern Europe between the Netherlands and France along the North Sea.

This small country is divided into 3 regions: Dutch-speaking (Flemish) Flanders to the North, French-speaking (Walloon) Wallonia to the South, and the centrally-located, bilingual Brussels-Capital Region. Flanders and Wallonia are then each divided into 5 provinces. Brussels-Capital Region is a completely separate region that is not part of a province. From Brussels, most of the country can be accessed by train within a couple of hours.

Cultural note: frites (twice-fried potato fries) were originally created in Belgium—“French fries” refers to the French cut of the potatoes; they are dipped in mayonnaise or different types of aioli, not ketchup. Each Belgian beer has its own glass appropriate for serving; they taste smooth and delicious… their imported versions in the US don’t even compare. Cash is required in many cafés and restaurants in remote villages, such as Dinant.

Regions of Belgium

Brussels-Capital Region

Flanders

Antwerp, Limburg, Flemish Brabant, East Flanders, West Flanders

Wallonia

Hainaut, Walloon Brabant, Namur, Liège, Luxembourg (not to be confused with the country)

Brussels

Flemish Cities

Antwerp  •  Ghent  •  Bruges  •  Mechelen

Walloon Cities

Namur  •  Dinant  •  Liège  •  Charleroi


Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s