Foreign Perspectives

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I’ve been going back and forth to Northern Ireland for quite a while now but in the past year it’s started to change quite dramatically.

For instance, the elve taking the money for the Santa photos was Polish and just about all the waiters/waitresses in the hotel were Polish. In fact, Polish workers are seen just about everywhere in Northern Ireland now.

The immigration to Northern Ireland is probably more striking than it is elsewhere in the UK in that there was virtually no immigration to Northern Ireland as recently as three or four years ago. So far, it’s not really changed much about the province but I’m sure that’ll change as the new immigrants settle into live there and start wondering about a few of the peculiar things that go on.

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As usual when there’s a Spanish holiday, we were pretty much completely full over the last couple of days and yet nobody took a breakfast!

In some ways that suits us as it gives us a bit of a break from the need to get up very early to do the breakfasts.

But why don’t they take them though? They certainly take breakfasts in hotels in Spain so why don’t they take them in France? Although it’s hard to give a definitive answer I suspect that it has a lot to do with the absolutely pathetic excuse for a breakfast that you get in most French establishments although funnily enough the price is the same or even higher than for breakfasts in the Spanish equivalent and in Spain you get a very full breakfast for that money.

So, it’s probably down to the French not really “doing” breakfast as a proper meal.

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You’d think that France and Spanish culture in the areas along the common border would be very similar after so many years of that border being open but there are still considerable differences.

For example, as soon as you cross the border, you see girls sitting or standing by the roadside. They’re prostitutes yet you don’t see any by the roadside just over the border in France. OK, that’s probably down to some legal difference, but even so.

What’s not down to a legal difference is that in France the restaurants serve food from noon to 2pm. After that, you’re basically talking the likes of McDonalds if you want to eat. Yet drive a couple of miles south and you’ll find the Spanish will serve food most of the day with no really sharp cut-off times at all. Moreover the portions are considerably larger and the prices considerably lower.

It looks like it’ll be generations before that difference starts to fade rather than the few years that many expected it would be.

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