Good (British) grub!

Apart from catching up with friends and family recently in the UK, the best thing about going home was the food. British food is fantastic and I challenge any ignorant fool to claim otherwise, since I know that real British food is up there among the coq au vin, the tapas and the other equally delicious European dishes.

In London I picked up a BLT. Every time I took a scrumptious bite, I let out a little mmm (barely audible for fear of scaring or worrying those picnicking near to me in Hyde Park). The bacon was crispy, not fatty, there wasn’t too much of it. The bread soft, with delicious (and nutritious!) seeds and it tasted homemade. The lettuce was everything you want lettuce to be; fresh, green and with that satisfying crunch noise as you bite into it. The tomatoes were straight from someone’s greenhouse vine. It was a rather spiffing sandwich. Well done England, you’ve done Lord Sandwich proud.

Then I was in a countryside pub, and I spent a good few minutes deciding what to have from the blackboard menu. Steak sandwich? Ploughman’s? Goats cheese salad? Bangers and mash? A whole menu of fantastic fodder. I went for the goats cheese salad – welsh goats’ cheese on crusty bread, with a salsa of fresh tomatoes. Admittedly, the idea of this dish is mighty similar to an Italian bruschetta, or a French salade de chevre chaud, but it was British goats’ cheese, homemade bread and British tomatoes. And even better because we sat outside on a wobbly wooden picnic bench in the beer garden and ate it.

You really are hard pushed to find a pub equivalent anywhere other than in the UK. The thing about our pubs is that there is no pretension. You go there, drink some local beer, eat some (usually) local food and be merry. The nearest I have come across to a good pub in Europe is the Germanic beer halls, but they tend to be a little more regimented; rows of benches laid out, smart waiters come to your table to take your order, no-one shouts ‘time at the bar’ and they don’t tend to have beer gardens.

Obviously, there are still some rather rubbish eateries in the UK. But we should celebrate the culinary diversity of the UK (I also enjoyed a Philippine meal during my trip) and the delicious and often inexpensive food that is offered to us on a plate in the UK.

And, isn’t the fact that we export so many of our cookery programmes and celebrity chefs to the continent proof enough that actually the Europeans (that’s right, even the French) want to eat British?

Le binge-drinking

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/27/foodanddrink.france

I read this article about ‘le binge drinking’ and I rejoiced! This is something I have argued with many a French person on many an occasion. Those French people tended to get on their high horses and claim, (as is often the case, I have found), moral superiority; its that mythical ‘exception française’ cropping up once again!
My most memorable discussion on alcohol consumption in the UK and in France was at a party in Calais. Most people were fairly well oiled and I believe that the conversation arose because a French guy there believed me to be a lot more drunk than I actually was. Since English girls do not have a fantastic reputation in France, I took up this guy on his invitation for an intelligent discussion, to try and defend the British Female. He claimed that there are more alcoholics in England than in France. I have no idea about the statistics of either country; but I looked around me at the gathering, and counted that half of the French punters were alcoholic according to most definitions of the expression. And this reflects my general experience of two years in France – I met more people with alcohol problems during my time there than when living in the UK. It is worth noting that the Pas-de-Calais does actually have alcohol dependency figures that are higher than the national average (for a number of reasons, but this closely correlates with the higher level of unemployment in the North), but I don’t think my experience is unique.
There certainly are alcohol problems in the UK. But finally it is great to see that people are realising that France is not immune to the same societal problems as the rest of Europe. I think the prevailing attitude (particularly among the British middle classes) that France is socially superior to the UK, with its super gastronomy, its family culture, its je ne sais quoi, is beginning to change. Not that either is better, nor perfect, just incredibly different with a few worrying similarities.

A la tienne!

Kissing Europeans

There was an interesting article on the Guardian website recently. It was the brilliant photo of a clumsy Gordon Brown embracing a Carla Bruni that drew me to the article. It is true that for a Brit, the question of social kissing (which itself is an odd expression, alluding a little to the concept of a social smoker; someone who lights up when a little tipsy, or when surrounded by people who are smoking), is a tricky one.

In France, it’s relatively easy for a girl. You kiss everyone, male and female, the required amount of ‘bises,’ which depends on your location in the country, and occasionally on your social standing. It is sometimes a little an inconvenient and time-consuming convention; I remember on a school bus once, at each stop children would get on, and they would not sit down until they had made their way along the bus greeting each person. This takes a while, and the bus driver won’t wait, so you could go as far as to say that kissing in France is dangerous!

It isn’t, however, that clear cut. The Guardian article claims that research in Calais confirmed that 50% of the people go in for 2 kisses, and the remainder go in for 3. In my years’ residency in Calais, I did not once come across someone who insisted on trois bises as opposed to the more common two. In the village where I lived during a school exchange in the South-East of France, the custom was three kisses, and yet in Sisteron, where I attended lycee as part of this exchange, the norm was two. It was up to you to decide the cut-off point between the two towns, and to remember who came from where.

Then there’s the man-on-man kissing, which to unaccustomed eyes is a funny sight. Not because I am homophobic, or because I don’t agree with men being affectionate; but it’s really not something you see very often in the UK. To be fair, most French guys have a core group of guy friends they kiss, and with the deprived remainder, a handshake suffices. I cannot imagine British guys, who will usually only go as far as an awkward pat on the back and an ‘alright mate,’ going cheek-to-cheek with their male friends for the sake of greeting each other!

In Italy there’s a lot of kissing too. And also in Spain. Even in Switzerland – even in German Switzerland, where friends (and actually it is only in very informal familiar situations) greet each other with three kisses. So why are we Brits so keen to avoid physical contact? Risk of infection? Social awkwardness? People often ask me “So if you don’t kiss when you greet each other, what do you do?” and I really have to think about it – the answer is, I think, that we simply say hello, and then move onto the conversation (usually about the weather).

So now that I have fully embraced the European kissing culture, my dilemma is that I find it hard to gauge the whole kissing thing in the UK. There are people who kiss. There are people who kiss once. There are others who go for two. But since they don’t wear stickers on there forehead making this clear, you have to guess. I have many more embarrassing kissing experiences in the UK now that I do in Europe, because there simply is no social convention for it yet.

Here's the link to ther article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/aug/05/humanbehaviour.familyandrelationships

The difference a few kilometres make to the future of the Earth

The problem with living in a place like Switzerland is that when you cross a border into another country, you realise that there are a lot of things that you take for granted here. Things like bin men, buses that come on time and whose doors close, clean lakeside beaches and clear signposting. This really isn’t an anti-Italy rant – I really love Italy and most Italians I’ve met are lovely (except for the man who chased me and an Austrian friend through the back streets of Bologna shouting ‘Pikatchu’ at us – but that’s another story all together!). Neither is it a blind praise of Switzerland. It is pure experiential observation.

It is rather easy to live in a bubble in Switzerland, ignorantly believing that everyone, at least in Europe, has PET recycling bins, pays for the amount of waste they generate and takes their own shopping bags to the supermarket rather than taking plastic bags. Yet only a few kilometres away in Italy (and I know that Italy is certainly not the only environmental criminal), searching for a bottle bank is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Perhaps the most shocking observation from my weekend camping in Lenno on Lake Como was the amount of pollution the public boat services pumped out. Boats left each port of call with a huge filthy putrid black cloud that clung to the water surface and eventually dispersed. The air is filled with the noise of jet skis and power boats, something we are spared of on Vierwaldstatersee. I’m not sure if there are speed regulations on Lake Lucerne, or if people would simply consider you a pretentious arsehole if you were to create such a ruckus in such a beautiful place.

An Italian paradox: Italians love children, but apparently not enough to clean the broken glass and empty containers from the beaches of Lake Como. As far as I am aware, there is quite a high rate of unemployment in Italy – couldn’t these unemployed people clean up a little bit?

On arrival in the beautiful town of Como, we descended into the centre through a little park, which was littered with discarded newspapers, drinks cans and plastic bags. That was the first of our many “This wouldn’t happen in Switzerland.” On departure, Juan nearly fell out of a broken bus door as the delayed bus swung around a corner. So the departing exclamation was identical to that of the arrival.

To me this is one of best things about living in different countries – it makes you question other places, other peoples’ behaviour (and your own.). I really had a super weekend; and Como is beautiful, if a little polluted. The Italian way of life is also beautiful and Italy is wonderful, but the Italians really need to change their attitude towards the environment.

I will keep going to Italy for as long as they continue to make delicious gnocchi, to ride rusty town bicycles and talk with their hands, but I would rather swim in a cold but clean lake in Switzerland than a warm but filthy lake in Italy (even if I can’t have such a good gelato after my dip!).