For a practical example of this, simply drive southwest from Brussels and you’ll see signs directing you to “Mons” and “Bergen”. This is one and the same town, but the name is listed twice: in French and Flemish. Or drive northwest towards Lille and you’ll see signs for “Lille”, but also for “Rijsel”, which is what the locals in Flanders call it.

Now presumably there are historical reasons for why English people say “Finland” instead of “Suomi”, or why the Deutsch are referred to as “Allemands”, “Tedeschi” or “Germans” in other parts of the continent, and presumably this force of habit is the reason why, like many irrational aspects of language, it’s just something we’ve got used to and isn’t likely to change any time soon. But it still irritates me. Especially because of the inconsistency. We say “Tuscany” instead of “Toscana”, but then we manage to pronounce all the other Italian region names the same way as the Italians do. It’s not as if the originals pose pronunciation problems for non-natives, or, as is the case of the full name for Bangkok, the issue of having to draw breath several times while you try to say it.

While it may grate slightly to hear someone speaking in English and then dropping in a foreign name, with an attempt at the correct foreign pronunciation: “Yah, we spent the summer in Toscana this year”, to me it seems the only logical and respectful way to do it.

But the one I find even more bizarre is the tendency in some countries to translate people‘s names. I know several Greeks living in Brussels who, presumably for the sake of integration and convenience refer to themselves as “Georges”, when in fact their original Greek name is “Giorgios”. And once when I was teaching English in Genoa and we were discussing the royal family, I was asked a question about “Principe Carlo”. It took a good few seconds before I realised that they meant Prince Charles. No English person would dream of seriously calling the king of Spain “King John Charles”. He’s King Juan Carlos. My name is my name, and I don’t want you to change it to something more familiar to you from your own culture, thank you very much.

I am untranslatable.

It got to the stage (as it often does with flickr) that I went out specifically looking for moss to take photos of. Soon a flickr group of the same name had been set up, and at the time of writing it has 178 members and 820 photos. My own contributions come from places as varied as Belgium, Exeter, Vienna, Piedmont,  Japan and California.

But last month I hit the motherlode. We visited the Hall of Mosses in the Hoh rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, where every tree is literally dripping with moss. It coats the floor like a soft green carpet, it hangs in curtains from the branches, it bubbles up tree trunks. It’s a magical place, and although I’m happy with some of my photos they don’t really capture the full verdant softness of it all.

I headed for a spot on the corner of  SW5th and Stark, where there was a pod of around twenty carts offering a wide range of fare:

Love the photo on this one:

I chose a Czech cart, which is one of the most well known and popular.

If I’d known I could get a free postcard I’d have stopped shaving before I left Brussels.

Here’s my “Schnitzelwich”, which is, as the name suggests, a Schnitzel in a bun, although a tangy red sauce underneath added flavour.

If we’d had more time there I’d love to have tried some more. In fact given the number of carts you could stay in Portland for over a year and never need to step inside a restaurant or eat at the same cart twice.

The other food ‘must do’ in Portland, about which I was also ignorant before arriving, is Voodoo Doughnuts. Friends who live nearby insisted that we go there.

We passed it several times during our stay and there was always an enormous queue.

All the bricks are glittery, for some reason.

Here’s the full menu.

And there’s a range of suggestive merchandising. I bought a t-shirt.

Here’s our haul. Chocolate covered figures for the kids, a Portland special for me (filled with cream and covered in chocolate), and the two at bottom left are for our friends who are American and who therefore insist on having bacon with everything.

Beautifully soft, sweet doughnuts, and very reasonably priced too.

This poster in the lift (elevator) was accompanied by a photo of a teenage girl excitedly texting this message to a friend, a manic grin on her face, seemingly unable to contain her delight at the prospect of a hotel room which meets basic minimum hygiene standards. Unfortunately I had to crop her out in order to get in close enough to see the small text.

On one wall was a fireplace, although, upon closer inspection, it turned out not to contain a real fire but a widescreen TV showing video of a roaring fire. Above it and to one side was a picture frame. This contained an iPad mini, showing a live video feed from a small camera positioned next to the coffee machine, so you could watch your drink as it brewed and poured out from the machine. And when I paid for my purchase the till consisted of an iPad with an app which let you pay by signing your name with your finger on the screen.

The speciality coffee that week was Bacon Latte: a normal latte containing bacon-flavoured syrup, served with a strip of caramelised bacon on the side. Not for me.

Seattle

• The Seattle Center: Space Needle and Chihuly Garden and Glass
• Pike Place Market
• Trying to find a good coffee house that isn’t a Starbucks

Portland

• Hipster-spotting
• Artisanal beer tasting
• Powell’s City of Books

Astoria

• The Astoria Column
• Lewis and Clark park

Olympic National Park

• Get wet
• Take photos of moss

Any other ideas gratefully received.

In a little side street just off one of the main roads in the centre of town, a simple sign and unadorned metal door are all you see from the outside. Once inside the usual flock of besuited staff waited with smiles and “Buonasera”s to take our coats and guide us to our table.

The setting is fairly sober, albeit with the occasional startling and incongrous piece of modern art. There’s nothing like three pigeons and a bin bag to put you in the mood for haute cuisine, right?

There were three tasting menus available, of differing lengths. We chose the one in the middle: “Classics”.

The first starter: freshwater fish (“aula“) tempura topped with fish (“carpione“) ice cream. The coldness and crunch combined perfectly to make a confident and surprising amuse-bouche.

Next, what looked like a simple, even uninspiring piece of white fish. Baccalà, in a tomato and caper broth, topped with thyme-infused breadcrumbs. Beautiful, delicate flavours and firm yet yielding flesh. Definitely more than meets the eye.

The next dish was presented as a journey along three different canals into Modena. Adriatic eel with some kind of strong teriyaki-style lacquer, polenta on the right and apple jelly on the left. The black dust in the foreground is burnt onion.

The next dish was listed on the menu as simply “Think Green”. What this meant on the plate was a selection of mushrooms, truffle, radish and chlorophyll, all raw, and presented in such a way as to suggest (according to the waiter) the hills around Modena. The subtly earthy flavours were a nice contrast after the previous dish.

Now this was perhaps an unusual moment for the cheese course to appear, but it wasn’t really your conventional array of slices and nuggets. It consisted entirely of Parmigiano Reggiano, all of different ages and strengths, and all prepared in a different way: liquid, soufflé, mousse, foam and cracker. A lovely, tasty idea, although it’s probably just as well it was a small portion.

Another strange presentation next: a glass containing (bottom up) veal, pancetta, parmigiana, beans and rosemary. It supposedly represents, via its ingredients, a journey through France, Spain and Italy.

For the main meat course we were back to something more recognisable, but no less tasty for that. Slow-cooked guinea fowl, truffle potatoes, chlorophyll, balsamic vinegar. And just before we tucked in the waiter gave it a shot from an aerosol spray made from the bird’s bones, which was intended to give it that “roasted” flavour. It worked.

What was even better was the little mouthful served as a side dish: a crunchy slice of the bird’s skin, with white chocolate with garlic, dark chocolate with liver, and toast flavoured ice cream. This may have been the most interesting and stimulating mouthful of the whole evening.

Pre-dessert, and another break with traditional menu formats: foie gras. On a stick. Covered in caramelised almonds and containing a large blob of balsamic vinegar in the centre. I wish I could persuade Magnum to market a large version of these.

After the foie gras the dessert proper was a very mild disappointment. “Broken” lemon tart, capers, zabaglione, chili pepper. Not the best end to meal but a better use of the smashed plate idea than we’d seen in ‘t Zilte last year.

Finally, a word about the wine, most of which was exceptional and some of which was quite strange. As usual we asked for a selection of wines to accompany the various stages of the tasting menu. Perhaps most notable was the Zibibbo Serragghia, a naturally cloudy, unfiltered white which to the nose gave the impression of being a sickly sweet dessert wine, yet in the mouth was dry and acidic.

At the end of the meal we asked for a list of the wines we’d tasted and the next day they emailed us this PDF with the full menu:

Let’s put it this way: I found Modena as a town to be of limited interest, but the five-hour round trip from Genoa to visit Osteria Francescana was worth it.

Our place secured, we set off immediately and five minutes later made our way into a tiny, packed room off a nondescript street. Our eponymous host placed us on a table next to another young couple (her: Tuscan, him: Modenese) and quickly and rather brusquely informed us of the dishes available. This being a home cooking kind of place the options were few and simple. You pay a flat fee of 20 Euro regardless of what you eat, but you have the right to three courses, water, bread, wine and coffee.

I didn’t want to interrupt the experience too much (and was maybe a little intimidated by the close quarters and proximity of the other diners) so I only took a few iPhone photos of the dishes. A longer post (in Italian) with more pictures of the room and Ermes himself can be found here. My wife chose the cavatelli in brodo as a starter:

I went for the maccheroni; oven baked pasta with a very crunchy dark crust on top. Good, moreish comfort food for a cold February lunch time.

For the main course I had rabbit with boiled potatoes. Nothing groundbreaking, and rather starkly presented, but the meat was tender and well seasoned and tasty.

We finished with a kind of light, sweet pastry which is traditional at Carnival time and goes variously by the name of bugie, frappe, or chiacchere among other regional variants.

So, the food was simple, honest, tasty fare. Nothing spectacular, but popular with those who like traditional regional specialities prepared in the same way their grandmothers used to do it. But perhaps what made it a more memorable experience was Ermes himself. He’s quite the local celebrity and he probably exaggerates his moods swings and outsized personality at least a little in order to keep his clientele entertained. A few examples: at one point his elderly aunt stopped by for a bite to eat. He dumped her at the end of a large table full of strangers and they bickered with each other sporadically throughout the meal. During our main course someone on the table behind ours wanted to know what a particular dish was like, so Ermes picked up my wife’s plate, as she was in the middle of raising a forkful to her mouth, held it out in front of the other diners for them to glance at, then plonked it back on our table.

On the wall there’s a chart indicating his mood that day. The text at top left says “For those of you who drink to forget, please pay in advance”.

This was undoubtedly good for a few laughs, and the warm atmosphere and conversation we shared with the other couple on our table meant that the social aspect of the meal was at least as important and enjoyable as the actual food. There are a lot of press clippings on the walls and I wondered whether Ermes’ celebrity was overshadowing the restaurant itself. Had it turned into a magnet for the tourist horde (of which, of course, we ourselves were a part) who wanted a caricatured Italian shouting and gesturing and flinging plates of hot pasta around?

But on the other hand we were the only non-locals there that day, so I don’t think his popularity can be put down to catering to foreigners’ expectations. The “character” of the place is certainly a little self-conscious, maybe even a little exaggerated and theatrical, but no less genuine for that. And I did enjoy the food. Of the reviews on sites like Trip Advisor the negative ones expressed mainly disappointment with the food itself, which they felt didn’t match the restaurant’s reputation, and the flat 20 Euro fee which applied even if all they ate was a plate of pasta. But if you’re in the mood for something simple and tasty and filling, and don’t mind a bit of noise and bustle and shouting, it’s a bargain.

And by the time we left a queue was starting to form outside…

Here’s our menu, for those of you who can understand (or Google translate) Dutch. The only thing here we didn’t get was the ham and melon, but I could live with that.

Our first amuse-bouche was sardine and radish. Fresh and sharp and tasty.

Foie gras with onion chutney. Fine, but the foie gras was a little cold and hard.

This one was the first in a series of dishes to use a presentational novelty. A flat plate for one dish, which serves as a lid for a warm dish in a bowl underneath. Two variations on cockles.

And then one of the best selections. The chorizo “pizza” on the right was fine, but the tomato macaroon in the middle was lovely.

On to the main courses, and this was undoubtedly the highlight of the meal. It’s just tomato and shrimp, as traditional a starter as you’re likely to get in Belgium, but the use of different coloured varieties of tomato and the slightly “deconstructed” presentation, along with the quality of the ingredients made this a winner.

And of course this was just the lid, covering the selection of shrimp, egg, croutons and avocado inside.

Another course, another lid: a slice of eel with apple, meringue and balsamic blobs.

And in the bowl underneath another Belgian classic: eel in green sauce. No complaints here either, although the traditional version comes in a slightly larger portion.

Another wacky presentation for the consommé, which was covered with a crusty dome.

Once broken, the aroma of the pigeon broth wafts free, and crumbs from the dome fall in to give you something to chew on.

Oxtail with truffle and a soft-boiled egg. Probably the evening’s only failure. It looks rather unfortunate, like something that’s been dropped rather than constructed, the egg yolk smothered the flavour of the oxtail, and the truffle was lost completely.

But we were back on track with the final meat course: pheasant with endive and sprouts. Beautiful tender meat.

Unfortunately things ended on a slightly sour note (ironic, as we were at the dessert stage). Service had slowed down enormously throughout the meal, and we’d already had an interminable wait for the pheasant. It was getting late and snow was starting to fall pretty heavily, so I enquired as to how much longer the rest of the meal would take, throwing in a casual reference to our babysitter as justification. The head waiter got the impression that I was saying we had to leave ASAP, and gave me the option of skipping any remaining courses. One of the two desert courses would be ready almost immediately, whereas the other would take more time, so I told her we’d like the quick one only. We received our plates of cold, citrus-flavoured sorbets and ice cream shortly afterwards, and the bill almost immediately.

Service had been a little spotty throughout, to be honest. We’d been served by three different staff, one of whom was obviously in charge and spoke to us in English when she heard us doing so, another who spoke in Dutch (which we managed to follow), and a third who barely spoke two words to us in any language, and who plonked our plates down in front of us without any explanation as to what we were about to eat.

Still, these slips aside, it was an enjoyable meal of modern versions of Belgian classics.

Beforehand I’d checked out the “Parental Guide” page on IMDB to see if there was anything in the film I didn’t want them to see, but all they mentioned was a little mild profanity (“Shit” and “damn”), an intense storm scene, some animal carcasses, and a splash of blood. One user says there’s some nudity from behind, but that’s incorrect (although even if there were, I think they could stand the sight of a bare bum with being psychologically scarred). I was surprised to see that it’s rated 12A in the UK, as I think a PG rating is plenty, and my girls certainly weren’t disturbed by anything in this film.

Interestingly the film itself deals with growing up, as a five-year-old girl living in harsh conditions has to learn self-reliance, confidence and independence and trying to understand her place in the universe. For a supposedly adult film it’s told almost entirely from the small child’s point of view, complete with heightened perceptions and imaginary monsters. Initially my daughters were unsure about it, partly I think because it was so different in style and approach from the things they’re used to seeing. Halfway through one of them turned to me and said “I don’t want you to buy this film” [on DVD]. But by the end they’d changed their minds and had really gotten into it. They had a lot of questions, and we talked afterwards about poverty, people who live on their own and who don’t want help from outsiders, even when their health or safety are threatened, and about why the father seemed angry all the time and what “tough love” is.

On the whole I’d say it was a pretty successful experiment, and while they’re not ready to ditch Disney just yet, I’ll be keeping my eyes open for other alternatives to Hollywood CG cartoons in the future. Especially things like this which open their eyes to other cultures and ways of life.

The one thing you need to be aware of when taking kids to non-kid films at the cinema, however, is the trailers, which are likely to be for other, more “adult” films. My heart sank when the trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s violent (duh) western Django Unchained came on. Thankfully it was only a brief, non-violent teaser featuring plenty of shooting but no blood. The 6yo said “I don’t want to see that film. It’s all about guns”.