Qualla: Lokeren

Lokeren: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Floris DC, CC BY-SA 4.0. Horse sausage. That is the officially recognized regional product of Lokeren, certified and protected like a fine cheese or a good ham. Lokerse paardenworst is sold in the butcher shops along the Markt, sliced thin onto rye bread, eaten without ceremony. It is the kind of detail that tells you immediately you are in a Flemish town with its own opinions about food, its own dialect for the river it sits on, and absolutely no need to apologize for either.

Read more: Lokeren on Qualla

Image: Floris DC | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lokeren: The Durme City

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Lokeren grew up on the right bank of the Durme - a slow, brown Flemish river that gives the town one of its nicknames, 'The Durme City.' The first written mention of the place dates from 1114, when it was a damp parish living off agriculture and flax. By the middle of the 12th ce...

Read more: Lokeren on Qualla

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Lokeren: Hats, Linen, and a Wolf Plague

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DeSchepperG, CC BY 4.0. From the 16th to the 19th century, Lokeren was the heart of the oldest Flemish flax region, supplying the best yarn to the weaving mills of Flanders. Then, around 1700, it pivoted to a new specialty: hat manufacturing, which made the town internationally known to anyone who neede...

Read more: Lokeren on Qualla

Image: DeSchepperG | CC BY 4.0

Lokeren: Trains, Sheets, and Internment

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1845, after a bad harvest, the city council asked Brussels for permission to build a railway station and a bridge over the Durme. Permission came, and on 7 August 1847 the station opened on the Ghent-Antwerp line, just under 400 meters from the Markt. New neighborhoods bloomed...

Read more: Lokeren on Qualla

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Lokeren: Daknam, and the Sound of Cleats

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Haggis MacHaggis, CC BY-SA 4.0. Daknam is a sub-municipality that became part of Lokeren in 1977, but administratively the two have been one since 1794. It is also the address of the Daknamstadion, the small stadium that for decades was home to KSC Lokeren - the football club whose rise and fall and rise again ...

Read more: Lokeren on Qualla

Image: Haggis MacHaggis | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lokeren: The Chocolate Warehouse

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Floris DC, CC BY-SA 4.0. Modern Lokeren has 42,100 inhabitants, the E17 motorway running just south of town, and on its eastern edge, in the Everslaer industrial park, what Callebaut announced would become the largest chocolate warehouse in Europe. Cyclist Greg Van Avermaet was born here in 1985 and went...

Read more: Lokeren on Qualla

Image: Floris DC | CC BY-SA 4.0