Some kilometres at the northside of Ieper, you have DIKSMUIDE. Together with Ieper and Nieuwpoort, it was one of the towns at the frontline during First World War. In this town, you find the Flemish-nationalist "IJZERTOREN" memorial. It was originally a peace memorial for the fallen Flemish soldiers in First World War, who were commanded by Frenchspeaking commanders who saw their language (Dutch) like an inferior language for primitive peasants and sent them into death. But extreme-right Flemish nationalists infiltrated the organization that is responsible for this memorial. So, the annual Flemish-nationalist pilgrimage to this memorial at the end of August don't attract only moderate and progressive Flemish-nationalists, but especially extreme-right ones.
This made from this pilgrimage an annual meeting for European extreme-right. Every year extreme-right organizations and skinheads who terrorize the local population occupy this town. On the pilgrimage of 1996 the extreme-right Flemish-nationalist organizations around the extreme-right political party "Vlaams Blok" tried to beat the other Flemish-nationalist people out, which ended up in a big fight on this pilgrimage and a lot of indignation by the moderate and progressive Flemish-nationalist like this memorial is sacred for all the Flemish-nationalist people.
In this town you can find the alternative pub "4AD" (Bortierlaan 3). They refuse to close their pub during the Flemish-nationalist pilgrimage 'cos they refuse to surrender for the extreme-right intimidation. If you are in Diksmuide during this Flemish-nationalist pilgrimage, visit this pub to support these nice but brave people against the intimidation and violence of extreme-right scum.

Avoid the BELGIAN COAST (sometimes called the "Flemish Coast" too) if you don't like tourist masses. It's very tourist oriented, expensive and at some places local traders are very unkind. This is especially like this in towns like KNOKKE-HEIST. In this town they like only strangers when they have money to spend (they don't like so-called "frigobox-tourists" who come with their own food and drinks) and they always complain they don't earn enough. If you decide to go to the Belgian/Flemish coast, then you better go to the bigger town OOSTENDE.

If you wanna see midieval buildings, you can go to BRUGGE. But you must know that the tourist center of Brugge is fake too and tourism makes Brugge expensive for the local population. Tourism made the pubs and the restaurants in the touristical center of Brugge too expensive for the local population. So, you don't see them there. The locals go to pubs and restaurants outside the touristical center of Brugge.