Belgium is not only Brussels

Having in lived in Belgium for several years, our friends Karel and Petar invited us for a weekend trip to explore two towns in the East of Belgium - Hasselt and Tongeren.
Hasselt is situated around 100 kms from Brussels in Flemish province. No wonder the architecture and the atmosphere made us feel as if we were in Holland.

The day was sunny and warm for the beginning of November, so we enjoyed walking, and small discoveries - flavoured ice cream, lait russe (this is a belgian way to call caffe latte and it means "Russian coffee"), lovely cafes in the square, fashion museum (which unfortunately we had no time to visit).

 Great success was finding House of the temporary art in Hasselt where we spent half a day seeing the displays Architecture of Fear, Save Food From Super Market and others. 
Save Food From Super Market is a mobile exhibition on locally disappearing vegetables where they promote vegies such as purslane, pattypansquash, parsnip, scorzonera, kohlrabi, chard (any familiar names?). Although, for Lithuanians these vegetables are known good enough and are grown in grandmothers' gardens!


Between visiting the exhibitions, we enjoyed ths golden autumn in the yard...some even slept there.

 Here we are creating art ourselves. 
You have to closer look at the eyes of the photographer! Seems he is shooting a ghost! :-)

 

To Tongeren we arrived late afternoon and unfortunately didn't have much time to get to know it better. But we captured a dog statue (live!), cobblestone streets and modern building of Gallo-Roman museum awarded as EU Museum of the Year! Also the Basilica looked gorgeous as we entered the town.

Tongeren is the oldest town in Belgium, so it's a right place to start getting to know the country..