Simon Calder: The man who pays his way

The scourge of Europe is the Irish pub. Marketing teams' misrepresentations of jolly inns in Cork or Dublin infiltrate every corner of the Continent. These bogus bars are popular with two groups of people: expatriates for whom this version of home will suffice, especially after five pints of Guinness; and misguided locals who fondly believe that five pints of Guinness plus talking loudly over the Boomtown Rats' most distorted hits will make them more attractive to the opposite sex.

One prominent corner of Rue Victor Hugo in Bordeaux is occupied by a pub called The Blarney Stone. Any local Bordelais who pops in for a couple and then decides to go over and kiss the real thing will be surprised, upon arrival in Cork, that the national drink is not, after all, Dark Dog ("guarana and vitamin energy drink") and a Double Vodka, this week's special at €7 (£4).

Irish pubs a long way from the home turf are a sign of creeping cultural devaluation. The first evidence that post-Communist Russia would lose its cultural way was when Molly Malone's opened up a little west of the Kremlin.

At least Belgium, that most European of nations, has managed to retain its tradition of brewing. At any rate, that was what I thought until my trip last Saturday to the handsome town of Tournai. The station buffet is a grand affair, decorated with murals honouring the train – and a neon sign celebrating a single brewery. Serious drinkers know that Belgian beers are superb. Brands such as Jupiler and Maes may read like misspelt members of the solar system, but they are merely the larger (or should that be lager?) players on the Belgian beer scene, along with Chimay and Hoegaarden, Leffe and Duvel.

Back to the buffet, and that neon sign. It reads "Whitbread". This British brewer turns out some acceptable beers for the undemanding UK market, but its version of Stella Artois fails to match the Leuven original.

There is worse in store for the Belgian boozer. Wander past the fast-food takeaway called Dog Sandwich (selling sausages in bread rolls, not Korean delicacies) and you reach the Big Ben Bar. Now, bearing in mind that the middle of Frankfurt boasts a Birmingham Pub, such a thing is hardly a surprise. But given maximum prominence, and with the clumsy font all too familiar to British beer drinkers in the bad old days of the Seventies, is the word Watneys. Roll out the barrel of Hoegaarden, please.

¿ Whatever next: a US airline dishing out bangers and mash? Yes. You might imagine that any transatlantic carrier seeking to impress passengers with inflight meals would err on the side of the exotic. But United Airlines, the second-largest in the world, has decided that we want "comfort foods" when flying to America. So bangers are on the menu, along with scones and clotted cream, Walker's crisps and Toffee Crisp.

The airline has hired the distinctive American broadcaster Loyd Grossman to promote the new inflight meals. "Air travel is stressful," he says, "and familiar dishes are a good way of helping passengers relax."

Familiarity breeds contentment, then, even if our national dish in the 21st century is chicken tikka masala – and most of us are more familiar with pizza than bangers and mash. But what will the Americans, who comprise many of the passengers on board the average United plane, make of a delicacy such as pork and leek sausages in a mush of potatoes? Mr Grossman believes they may get hooked on UK cuisine. "This will play a valuable role in promoting British food."

If you look for something more exotic than pub grub on your travels, the airline points out: "The comfort food is being served alongside our usual sophisticated menu."

¿ "It's like a dog," said the ticket collector. Fortunately, we were not discussing food, but the folding bicycle shown to the left.

The bike is triggering a series of confrontations with Continental railway staff, the latest as I left Belgium. The gentleman demanded the princely sum of €1.10 (70p). Given that we were snaking south through the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, maybe it was more a grand ducal sum. Anyway, it was unavoidable. "Whether you have a big dog, or a small dog, or a dog in a box, you have to pay for it," he explained. "It's the same with a bicycle." Four legs bad, two wheels bad.

¿ The Duchy is grand in scope if not scale, and it is well worth incurring the odd euro fine for excess baggage. But the rash of Celtic pubs has spread across Luxembourg, with a cluster of them lurking down by the river. At Scott's Inn, customers are offered a "bière special". You may be familiar with this brew: Strongbow cider, which in my book is neither beer nor special.

¿ If it costs £620m to build an air-traffic control system that opens six years late, causes an immediate reduction in the capacity of Britain's skies, and seems prone to failure, how much more would we have to stump up to buy a system that actually works? Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of travellers saw their plans disappear in a puff of smoke emanating from the fantastically expensive machinery at the National Air Traffic Service (NATS) operation at Swanwick, which opened less than four months ago.

"Our objective is to build as much resilience as possible into the system," said NATS when the centre opened. The company certainly built in plenty of improvements to working conditions. Staff responsible for the safety of flights in UK airspace can relax in a new coffee shop or work out in the on-site gym. Such perks are commendable, but perhaps diverted the designers' attention from the tiresome business of building a foolproof air-traffic system.

I estimate that yesterday's delays will have cost UK airlines around £10m in lost revenue from hundreds of cancelled flights, and made thousands of travellers from overseas vow never to fly here again. The airlines, rightly, are livid – the stakes that they bought in the part-privatisation have done them no good in pressing for a system that actually works. The decision by easyJet to write off its £7.2m investment in NATS as money down the drain looks a sound decision: one day after buying Go, the expanded airline lost around £1.5m. And thousands of people who thought they would be drinking in Mulligan's in Tara Street, Dublin, last night had to make do with a pint or two of "special beer" at Scruffy Mac's on Bridge Street Bishop's Stortford, formerly the Black Lion.

travel@independent.co.uk