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The Benelux countries are playing most interesting roles in the European history since early medieval times. They were always places of economical, political or other interest to the neighboring countries and therefore there were always lots of events and interesting historical moments.

A member of the Benelux counties - Belgium was always a place of interest, being historically for a period of time a part of the Netherlands, because it had access to the sea and therefore those early economical relations between countries were taking place also in this country.

One of the most interesting places to visit in Belgium is the town Brugge. There are many opinions that it is one of the most beautiful towns in Western Europe. It was formerly one of the most important international trade ports and trading settlements. Even the first financial relations such as credit trade, banks and many other that are normal for us right now were born there too, as in many European ports of the medieval times. The word "Bourse" itself, under which we understand now "Stock Exchange" was born there as it is the surname of the person who settled up the place for negotiations between the merchants in Brugge in 1309, which has been later developed into an elaborated financial market with various financial features.

But the city with its highly developed to that time financial and economical infrastructure was fully dependent from it's port and in the 1500 the sea stepped 15 km from the city. And in spite of the efforts to build channels to keep the link to the sea, there were no possibility to keep them navigable. Till the seventeenth century there were efforts to bring the prosperity back to the city, but without much success and the city was declared dead. Even the local women had to take chairs out on the streets and roads and to manufacture point-laces to keep the household. And that was actually the main reason why the city is one of the most interesting in Western Europe - the impossibility to build anything new brought the city to the 21-th century in the state of 16-th! That was actually undiscovered until the middle of the 20-th century when some English tourists have revealed this town and after that came the tourists boom, counting circa 2 millions of official tourists per year (one should understand that an official tourist is a tourist that stays at least a night in a hotel and can be counted by the statistical departments, but the buses and trains with so called one-day-trip tourists are making many more additional millions per year). This made the town to the cultural capital of the Europe in the year 2002.

There are many sights in the city, a 13-th century bell tower that still gives concerts, the Basilica of the Holy Blood, where you could take a look and even touch a cylinder with a piece of wool soaked with the blood of Christ and hundreds of building amazing with it's age and beautifulness.

The city is overcrowded with tourists so you would better try to get there as early in the mourning as possible. The best way to get there is train and bus. A car is also quite a good possibility due to the large parking area near the railway station. You can use then the bus to the center that is included in the price of parking.

Have a nice time traveling to Brugge.