Souk and Ye Shall Find

If you have ever arrived in Brussels by Eurostar on a Sunday morning and wandered outside Midi station, you would be forgiven for thinking you had got on the wrong train and ended up in Marrakesh. Midi market, which sprawls over a vast area covering all the streets around the station, competes with the Stadium market in Warsaw for the title of biggest outdoor market in Europe. It was rumoured that you could buy a Russian army-surplus Kalashnikov and even an RPG launcher at the Warsaw Stadium, although I never saw anything more threatening than some very dodgy vodka. Almost every stall at Midi is run by Flemish-speaking North Africans, which in itself is fairly surreal, especially if, like me, you are sometimes not quite compos mentus on a Sunday morning. I like to fit in wherever I go, and so I sport my babouches (pointy Moroccan slippers) and a pair of harem pants, with a tasteful scarf skilfully wound around my Sunday-morning bad hair (what Zoe likes to call my Polish-cleaning-lady look – a bit like in my photo, but without the fruit).

Midi market is divided in two by the overhead train lines. On one side is the biggest collection of imported polyester tat this side of Guangzhou, on the other is the food section where fruit and veg is sold in 2 kilo lots at knock-down prices, and there are refrigerated vans selling cheese, fish and cold meats. I can never resist a spit-roast chicken from one of the two chicken vans - and when I say van, I mean a juggernaut-sized custom-built rotisserie with 150 chickens turning on the spit and six people serving. This being Belgium, each market has to have TWO chicken vans – one Flemish and one Walloon. In the interests of holding Belgium together single-handedly, I share my custom between them in an attempt at Geflügelpolitik.

In the centre of this court of miracles are about a dozen tables arranged in a constantly expanding rectangle, where a large North African family cheerily dish out pastries, olives, dates and dried fruits and banter with customers. At an improvised terrasse alongside, customers partake of mint tea and freshly-cooked pastillas from motherly ladies dressed in djellabas and headscarves. Another large fruit and veg stall with a prime corner position is manned by a bunch of comedians, one who runs, carries, serves, talks and short-changes you at 120 km an hour, while his colleague keeps up a running rap at full volume in recognizable gibberish, or possibly Berber. In the garden section you can get huge pot plants for the cheapest prices, and it is a common sight on a Sunday morning to see people staggering onto the metro carrying fully-grown trees in pots. I picked up a 3’ high Dracaena palm for £8, which fitted nicely into my shopping wheelie thing. There is also a Spanish sector where you can buy all manner of Iberian delicacies which will bring back memories of that holiday in Benidorm, another serving Greek specialities if you went to Corfu instead, and even a Havana cigar stall if you went to Cuba, which made me think of Harold, but only briefly. Bras for 1 euro, curtain material at 3 euros a metre, belly dancing costumes, paella dishes, carpets, all human life is here. I wouldn’t be surprised to see snake-charmers there one day. All this miraculously materializes in the early hours of Sunday and, just as magically, is completely gone by Sunday night. Even the rubbish.

Midi market is a far cry from my previous Sunday market in the leafy suburbs, which is a bit like a farmers’ market in the Home Counties, with organic mushrooms, Peruvian alpaca sweaters, home made quiches, designer chocolate, tasteful basketwork, etc. The only shopping trolleys you see there are proper wicker ones, steered unsteadily by elderly ladies in tweed suits. Big checked nylon bags are banned. Elegant straw baskets are the receptacle of choice. Stewed mussels are served with a glass of white wine for shoppers in need of an aperitif. I even saw the fish man serving his regular customers a glass of chilled white wine. They’re a well-heeled lot in that part of town, sporting Barbour jackets and promenading their matching pairs of pedigree dogs. A lot of English voices are heard. You might as well be in Tunbridge Wells.