Epen and Margraten

This weekend I visited my parents (who have a short holiday) in Epen in the south of the Netherlands, very close to Belgium and Germany.

Epen is rather touristic and from WikiPedia:

Epen ( 50°47′N, 5°55′E) is a town in the Dutch province of Limburg. It is a part of the municipality of Gulpen-Wittem, and lies about 15 km southwest of Kerkrade.

In 2001, Epen had 506 inhabitants. The built-up area of the town was 0.11 km², and contained 197 residences.^[1]

In the neighbourhood is Margraten.

In Margraten is the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial, Europe's third largest war cemetery for unidentified soldiers who died in World War II. 8,302 soldiers are buried there under long rows of white crosses and stars of David. All graves are adopted by locals, who attend the graves and lay flowers every now and then. There have been regular visits here by soldiers who survived the war to visit a former comrade, hoping he's buried there somewhere. But now there are few left of them, so the once massive tributes are growing thin. President George W. Bush was the first American president who visited the cemetery, on May 8th 2005.

I visited on Sunday, I  was almost alone and it was rather impressive.