HELEN FRYER is a student from Covingham who is spending a year in the French city of Lille, working at the Pasteur Institute. Helen, 21, is a student at Keele University, where she is studying French and Biology.

Some of you may have seen adverts in the papers for city breaks to Christmas markets around the continent. If they're all like the one in Lille, I can definitely recommend them.

There are stalls for everything: nougat, jewellery, glassware, crepes, gingerbread, handmade toys and hot mulled wine, with Christmas music playing and a Big Wheel 50 metres tall.

It's best at night, when you can see fairy lights glittering all over the city.

There's also a ride with the odd name of Ideal Chenille.(apparently, chenille means 'caterpillar' think about that next time you wear that nice furry jumper and that's just what it looks like from the outside).

There's a long line of wooden cars in a circle, and as you whizz round faster and faster, a red tarpaulin comes over your heads so you're enclosed in a fast-moving tunnel of shrieks and bumps and clanking and whirring.

It said on the ticket that it was built in 1922, so the clanking was slightly worrying, but we survived and it was great fun.

I have finally met some English speakers my age. It turns out there are Irish students on the ground floor of my building, and they were kind enough to invite me out with them on Saturday night.

We ended up in a club called El Sombrero (it's as classy as it sounds!), where two of us were cornered by a couple of French men intent on improving their English, so they said.

We escaped eventually to dance to Michael Jackson and Dido and, all in all, felt at home.

The Irish seem to have a bit of a reputation here. I mentioned my new friends to two separate people at work, and both responded in exactly the same way a meaningful 'Oh!' and an inquiry into how much Guinness we'd got through.

A ridiculous stereotype. As if we'd get sozzled on Guinness.

Wine is much cheaper!