My first taste of Europe was a school trip to Paris by train and boat from Liverpool, led by Christian Brothers who were so unworldly that they bought us tickets for the only English-language film they could find, an old picture playing in a retro cinema near Pigalle. The sight and sound of them trying to round up a bunch of kids in a darkened theatre when they realised Midnight Cowboy wasn’t a western is a memory that still tickles me.
But I loved Paris for its rare elegance and sophistication, its inviting shop windows and stylishly dressed people, let alone the dazzling architecture and museums. The only thing we boys didn’t warm to was the mysterious, unpleasant smell when breathed on by the passengers in packed Metro carriages, later explained as garlic, an ingredient that didn’t feature in 1970s Lancashire cooking.
Subsequent visits taught me to appreciate French cuisine, so much so that I later worked during my uni holidays in a small bistro – also, alarmingly, near Pigalle; then followed pasta-fuelled visits to Italy; coffeeshops and recovery herring in Amsterdam (it’s all legal, so it must be good for you); Germany (blutwurst, bitte); 365 recipes for bacalhau in Portugal; before finally settling in post-Franco Spain, teaching English to university students in Granada and converting my salary into manzanilla sherry and slices of jamon from the acorn-fed, black-legged, Iberico pigs of Extremadura.
Reading over these words, I realise I’m a bit of a pig myself, rather than a cosmopolitan Europhile, but the continent has much more to offer. The single currency has deprived us of the beautiful banknotes and the mental gymnastics of converting your drachmas into pesetas, but the history, the galleries, the landscapes are overwhelming, while some excellent quirks remain: French and Italian teenagers require only a fountain to indulge in mass public displays of affection; bar staff in enlightened countries still free-pour spirits; you can stroll along cliff edges without fences or warnings; restaurants are yet to adopt our 200+ per cent markup on bottles of wine.
My favourite oddity, though, is a bar in Triana, the old gypsy quarter across the Guadalquivir from central Seville, that has what looks like a telephone booth attached to one end of the counter. It’s fun to eat delicious tapas, drink ice-cold beer and watch the faces of the curious tourists who peer through its tiny window to discover it’s a one-man urinal – and almost always in use. If that’s not worth the airfare, I don’t know what is!