Brussels

Dear Thomas,

Conversation over dinner last night with a chap from Eindhoven.
'Where are you from?' he asked.
"Yorkshire in England," I replied.
"Ah, Yorkshire! You 'av ze Yorkshire Ripper! Non?" he said. "We know of zis Ripper, ze killer! And ze Yorkshire Pudding also!'
'Ohhhhh Kaaaaay," says I (keeping calm), "Anything else?".
'Ze black pudding too!" he said.
A fellow diner, a charming twinkly-eyed chap - a pathologist from Luxembourg - chipped in. 'Where is this Yorkshire? Is it the South? Liverpool?'
Oh dear.
And I spent the following ooh, hour or so (!), extolling (quite forcefully, it has to be said) the virtues of my wonderful county. Because once you start, you can't stop.
It was a fabulous evening - and I think it marked the moment when I started to really feel at home in this vibrant city where everything happens, where most people are strangers, but all seem so happy to get along.
I told them about Leeds, about York, about Sheffield, about the seaside, the hills, the dales, the culture, the shopping, the art...anything to dispel from our Dutch friend's mind the idea that all we had of note in the region was a serial killer.
Afterwards I thought about their initial response - and my own reaction of righteous indignation.
And realised that we all do it - we all hook on to a cliche or a piece of notoriety about a place and it clouds our judgement forever.
Take poor Belgium, for example - the butt of endless jokes. Despite its huge importance why do we mainly only hear it referred to in terms of size comparisons. See http://www.sizeofbelgium.com.
Wales suffers this indignity too, of course.
And yet, now I'm here, I cannot, cannot understand why I have never been before. As I've said previously, perhaps it just needs to holler across The Channel just that little bit louder.
And perhaps Yorkshire does too. The good people at Welcome to Yorkshire are doing a cracking job - but there's clearly a way to go....certainly judging by this experience.