Photo licensed under the Creative Commons, created by Sjaak Kempe

Plateau on which the Hautes Fagnes spreads, is located between the Ardennes and the Eifel highlands. It is a part of the Belgian province of Liège as well as the German Länder of Rhineland – Palatinate and North Rhine – Westphalia. Hautes Fagnes National Park covers an area of ​​4100 hectares and such it is the largest nature reserve in Belgium. It consists mostly of moors, heaths and forests that are home to rare animal and plant species typical for cool and humid climate.

Hautes Fagnes National Park became a haven for lynx, wild cats, common grouse, deer, roe deer, wild boars and other animal species. Typical plant species for this area is yellow daffodil, which was used to dye Easter eggs and therefore collected heavily. To avoid devastation, you can now take only a flower per person.

Photo licensed under the Creative Commons, created by Sjaak Kempe

At the end of the 20th century started to come tourists not only from Belgium but also from other European countries. For this reason, it was necessary to regulate the movement of people especially in the park. In some areas of Hautes Fagnes National Park were established restricted access, while in some others were even banned at all. Today, the visitors can walk only on marked trails, but there are also some places where it is allowed only with a guide.

Many places are closed to the public during the nesting birds, ie from March to late July. Yet even today tourists flooded the park annually. In the summer, come nature lovers, and in winter cross-country skiers. Most visitors come from Belgium, of course, but others come from adjacent areas of the Netherlands and Germany.

View Hautes Fagnes National Park – the largest nature reserve in Belgium in a larger map

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Since the last re-estimation in 1989, the official Geographic Centre of Europe is according to Jean-George Affholder, a scientist at the Institut Géographique National (French National Geographic Institute), in Lithuania, 26 kilometres north of the capital city, Vilnius, near the village of Purnuškės (Bernotai).

Centre of Europe by Palmerop at the English language Wikipedia

But there are more different locations that are still fighting for being the midpoint of Europe:

• the small town of Rakhiv, or the village of Dilove near Rakhiv, in western Ukraine
• Bernotai, or Purnuškės, near Vilnius, in Lithuania
• a point on the island of Saaremaa in Estonia
• the village of Krahule, near Kremnica, in central Slovakia
• Suchowola, north of Białystok, in northeast Poland; and Toruń, in north-central Poland
• a point near Polotsk in Belarus
• s memorial near Tállya, Hungary

The geographical center of European Union is changing as well along with the growing of European Union. Here are the centers of European Union:

• 12 members: In 1987 – the middle of France, in the village of Saint-André-le-Coq, département of Puy-de-Dôme, région of Auvergne, and next was shifted after the reunification of Germany in 1990 some 25 km north-eastward, to the place called Noireterre in the village of Saint-Clément , département of Allier, the same région of Auvergne. A small monument commemorating the latter discovery still exists in Saint Clément.
• 15 members: (1995–2004) – Viroinval, Belgium, a monument there records that finding.
• 25 members: (2004–2007), in the village of Kleinmaischeid, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
• 27 members: Since January 1, 2007, with the inclusion of Romania and Bulgaria in the European Union, a wheat field outside of the German town of Gelnhausen, in Hesse, 115 km east of the previous marker

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