For Better For Wurst

The weather is grey and rainy, but not freezing.

I am reading restaurant critic Ruth Reichl's memoir, Garlic and Sapphires.

I am craving chilli. Very, very, very badly.

Travelling to Brussels and Frankfurt in winter is quite the beer-fuelled odyssey I had imagined it to be. And you get the most awesome wurst and mussels to go with the 600 or so beers in the market.

Except for the rest of the time, my head swirls with countless back-to-back meetings with economists, journos, central bankers. Embedded in the latter's DNA, I reckon, is the ability to say in a hundred different ways "I cannot tell you the answer". The French just do it in a more witty and charming way. But still, no harm prying. The market mood is jubilant, and not just because Christmas is here.

Brussels, capital of Belgium, is a place you would bring your grandmother to. It has a Hansel and Gretel-like fairytale quality. In the old city, you see miles of charming little shops selling all manner of handmade chocolate truffles, lace and jewelry. You are greeted with a warm "Bonjour, Madame" as you enter.

You see couples huddle in moody, chandelier-lit beer cafes that look like they have been there for a few centuries. The cafes, I mean, not the locals - although one or two did look a bit ancient.

And there are no mammoth shopping malls. Only quaint little boutiques. It is like Wal-mart never happened. Even in the belly of the subway stations, you find fine chocolatiers such as Leonidas rather than newsagents. Heaps of 16th century buildings and stately 19th century townhouses too.

Where I stayed is pretty sterile. An administrative zone as anonymous as Canberra. No shops. No nothing. Only brand new glass office towers.

The Christmas fair at the old city square is quite something else. It is full of handicraft and food stalls. The rain was a good excuse to drink hot red wine (vin chaud) and a bowl of piping-hot and peppery escargot soup for 1.50 euros.

The super-luxurious ICE train takes you across the Belgian plains, a Flemish-painting landscape lined with bare trees. Three hours later, voila. It deposits you onto the grand old Haupt Bahnhof or Main Station in Frankfurt.

Germany's financial capital throbs with activity, with money running through its veins.

What it lacks in the adorable stakes, it more than makes up for in size and cache. Skyscrapers jostle for space with imposing old bank buildings - marble and chandeliered palaces of finance that dare you to trespass.

Coming from charming and civil little Brussels, one thing I found is that most people in Frankfurt appear quite sullen. And the speeding traffic waits for no man - or woman. I feel the wintery chills in more ways than one. The saving grace is however sharing meals, alcohol and laughs with journos from so many continents and of so many tongues. Everytime you sit next to someone new, you learn about an entirely different world. Salut!