Last weekend, the Analog Girl and I went to Brussels. We spent a night in a run-down hotel from the 80s with cold bacon and slushy eggs for breakfast, and went to see some art and walked shivering around the Grand Place and had chips with mayo and Sambal Oelek-sauce and drank beer made by monks and took an elevator up to a large building built on a place were people were hanged in the Middle Ages.

Brussels is like the dirty little sister of Paris: she wears no high heels but old boots, and she drinks beer and burbs and demolishes a cone of frites after a night out, but it’s great fun every time you go out with her. And she’s only two hours away from Cologne.

And just because I cannot get enough of walking around shivering in cities in winter, tomorrow I’ll be going to Helsinki, thanks to the kind invitation of a few nice people, including Visit Helsinki. It’s not Reykjavik, and I’m afraid I won’t see any Northern Lights, but hey, they’ve got metal on the radio all day, every house has a sauna and they do good beers. I think I will like it.