Ah, Europe, how I'll miss you...

Today I took a wander through my town's little Christmas market. From what I had read - and, ahem, written - it was grand and impressive. In fact, it was neither of those things, but it was sweet, and complete with quirks like a stand where you could pay €5 to have a picture of yourself taken with an owl on your shoulder. Ah, Belgium.

I was hoping for lots of this kind of thing:

But mostly it looked liked this...

... which I imagine is a huge relief in super-cold years like 2010 (the tents are slightly heated), but the smell of cheese can be a little overwhelming, and it is undeniably not as charming or picturesque as the Brussels Christmas market. Still, it's hard not to love a place where you can buy this...

And this...

And this...

(Okay, those were all the same stand, but, mmm.) There were oysters, too, for those who like that kind of thing - and because it's a traditional Christmas delicacy in these parts...

And then, there was this. No, that is not a big block of cheese, though it looks a little like a huge camembert from a distance. But any disappointment I may have felt at not being able to Facebook-tag my West Wing friends with an obscure reference to Andrew Jackson (look it up, people) was obliterated by the realisation that this was, in fact, a big block of nougat.

Not only that, but there were multiple flavours of nougat - orange, Speculoos, chocolate, you name it, and the very helpful, very nice man let me taste all of them before I bought them.

I suppose it's time I started a "things I will miss about Europe" post...

3BT: cute toddler, good food and loo roll

1. I spend almost all day with my big sister and her adorable little boy, who smiles and laughs and points at things enthusiastically, and even lets me hold him for a little while. Seriously - he is such a cutie. This, by the way, is the same toddler nephew who is soothed in the middle of the night by West Wing episodes, possibly because he heard a lot of it from the womb, or possibly because he has very discerning taste. 

2. There is melon with ham at the wedding.

3. The cheap loo roll I buy from the local supermarket appears to have mathematical equations on it. Ones with Greek letters. Ah, Belgium. 

Quirky things about Belgium, #832

Please humour me while I engage in the tiniest of moans.

Imagine you run a newsagent's at Bruxelles Midi, the busyish international train station. You store a more-than-reasonable number of foreign newspapers. But times are hard for everyone, so you need to cut back. When do you think it is best to cut back on British publications: two months before a potentially historic election, or two month afterwards, when the excitement has died down, the country (perhaps) has a government again, and expats have stopped feeling guilty for deserting their homeland in its hour of need?

And then, once you've made this critical decision, which newspaper will you keep? I am not asking for The Observer, which is not to everybody's taste, and which I have in any case vowed to boycott forever more. (Though they've printed a letter from me this week, so I would quite like to see it.) But perhaps the Sunday Times, which is moderate enough that some Labour voters have been known to buy it, admittedly mainly for its Style section?

No. You go for the Sunday Telegraph. Because most British expats living in the capital of Europe, many of them working for one of its institutions, would not, I'm sure, be in any way opposed to Mr Cameron's views on the EU or to any of his other policies.

But then, although Belgium has many strengths, I have long since discovered that good business sense is not one of them.

Quirky things about Belgium: unpredictable efficiency

For weeks now, I've been meaning to blog in impressed tones about how well Belgium has coped with this unusually cold winter.

Impressed tones, but slightly wistful ones nonetheless: there was something truly lovely last year about looking out on sugar-coated London gardens from deep inside a centrally-heated bedroom, safe in the knowledge that no one expects to you get to work in such - shuddder - freezing weather.

No such nonsense prevails in Belgium, though. I'm told there is a law effectively banning "snow days": you are not allowed to skip work for such ridiculous reasons as a journey time of two hours in each direction on treacherous roads. The trains still run (with no more than usual delays). Life, believe it or not, goes on.

Here, when it snows, you put just add an extra layer, curse Skechers for being unable to make boots that last longer than a month, then keep calm and carry on. As you might in Russia, in fact.

In Russia, I would expect these kinds of cultural differences. Yet it seems that even after nearly a year here I can still be taken by surprise by how different my two homes are despite their geographical proximity. As a Brit, everything in me screamed, stay at home! Snow day! Nothing will be working! And one of the many joys of the self-employed is in fact the free exercise of such choices. So you'd have thought... But no. When in Rome, and all that.

So, off I went this morning, mildly irritated when my first student called five minutes into my journey to cancel her lesson: the buses weren't moving, she said, and she was understandably fed up with waiting in the cold. I should, at that point, have listened to my British instincts, and come straight home to be - erm, I mean to write my novel, but I reasoned that since the bus had always run so far, even on the snowiest of days, it would surely be fine by the time I needed it.

Oh, you of such great faith.

No buses; none. At least non on the 47 bus route, which constituted the last ten minutes of a journey which takes an hour and a half. So close, yet far enough away to get back on a tram, back on a train, and come home to have my heart as well as my body warmed by the season finale of the Gilmore Girls over a plate of pasta and pesto.

The train, of course, ran more or less on time, and here's my point: make your mind up, please, Belgium. Either be hopelessly inefficient (as I've come to expect, even to find endearing at times) and allow me to take one look out of the window and stay at home, guiltlessly confident that no one will mind because it's impossible to get anywhere anyway.

Or surprise us all with your sudden and uncharacteristic inefficiency.

But please choose one, and stick with it. I'm not sure your unpredictability is any more endearing in you than it is in a hormal woman.