Christmas markets in Belfast compared to France
December 27th, 2006
This year, Belfast has put on a Christmas market with a continental theme in front of the City Hall. One of the things that we found a little peculiar about it is that it actually has more French stalls than the Christmas markets in Perpignan. Of course, it also has substantial representations from Germany, Italy and even China. That’s something that you don’t get in France. For the most part, it’s either French or it isn’t there.
That applies to pretty much everything in fact. In a French supermarket, you get French cheese. In a UK supermarket you get UK cheese, Swiss cheese, German cheese and, of course, French cheese. Whereas even the largest French supermarket has only a tiny “ethnic” foods section, a typical UK supermarket doesn’t have an ethnic section at all because the food in the aisles is from everywhere. There are hardly any Australians living in Belfast yet it’s possible to buy Vegemite in Tesco; in France you’d need a really major supermarket to stock it.
Some would say: why shouldn’t it be French food in France? Well, obviously you would expect to have more French food in France than anything else but in every other country in the world you seem to get a reasonable representation of a selection of other cultures. The closed mentality in France makes that the rare exceptions to the “France only” rule very pale in comparison to the equivalent elsewhere.
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