So 2009 will go down as the year when Eurostar ruined the Christmas of tens of thousands of its customers.  An inability (or unwillingness) to fix a long-standing technical fault, coupled with some of the worst corporate communications since the stone age, have invariably put a lot people off Eurostar.  To say nothing of some pretty serious safety concerns.

Regular readers might know that I’ve never been a fan of Eurostar. But to recap: my disdain for the company is due to the cramped leg room; poor on-board communication; uncomfortable threadbare seats; the fact that far too many carriages smell of damp dog; scruffy waiting areas; and terrible food and drink, even in First Class.

I swear Eurostar once tried to serve me wine from a plastic bottle. And I’ve sneezed bigger portions than they serve in First Class.  And probably more edible too. So for the past few years I’ve let the plane take the strain, and my life has been better for it.

What the whole Eurostar fiasco highlights though is the sheer number of people travelling back and forth between London, Paris and Brussels.  Because I tend to fly on the route, I’ve never quite realised how many people shuttle between these three cities on the train.

As soon as the trains ground to a halt, a mass of humanity (or in-humanity) started forming outside check-in in St Pancras.   The backlog was huge.

London ranks as the seventh biggest French city – that’s about the size of Strasbourg.  Paris  and Brussels too have their own sizeable communities of British expats. But this post is not meant to marvel at the number of people living in a different country from their own. It’s to highlight the number of people who never really live in one country at all.

Early on Monday mornings thousands of commuters leave London to spend their working weak in Brussels, only to return late on Thursday or Friday.  Every weekend Brussels empties out as its temporary residence make the slog back to their homes in other countries.  The thousands of people who live in London but work in Brussels depend on the Eurostar, buying their tickets months ahead to keep the prices down.

Sure, this sort of mass commute is not limited to Brussels and Paris. Up until the financial crisis hit hard, upwards of 70,000 passengers a week were travelling between Heathrow and New York.  It’s a fair bet that a few of them were doing a weekly commute – something that would have been decidedly easier and more glamorous when Concorde was running. These transatlantic commuters – who were mostly overpaid bankers – earned the NY-LON moniker, as a contraction of the names of their twin cities.  Not to be outdone, the French coined the term Pari-Yorkers.

The huge flux of people between travelling between New York, Paris and London brings these cities much closer than their geography would suggest.  It’s no surprise then that New York feels more European than other big American cities, and that Paris and London have more of an American influence than other cities in Europe.

Ignoring the discomfort of spending huge portions of you life commuting on a packed Eurostar, I’ve always thought it sad that these people exists in a kind of never-world between two cities.  They might claim they get the benefit of the quality of life in Brussels with the earning capacity of London, or vice-versa. But to me it seems a sad way to spend your days.

Endless commuting between two world cities sounds glamorous but the reality must be quite different.  Never really settling in once place. Never spending enough time with friends. Never enjoying a proper lye-in.   Rather than existing in a perpetual commuters bubble, if you’re going to live somewhere else,  somewhere foreign, why not actually live there, and enjoy everything your new city has to offer?

No wonder the name for these London-Brussels commuters has never really taken off – BruDoners sounds about as glamorous as the reality must be.

Well, doing the daily links became too much so I’m just going to do my top 10 links at the end of the week but here are a few from the last few days.

• The 2004 BBC dramedy, NY-LON, starring Rashida Jones (Parks and Recreation) and Stephen Moyer (True Blood) is now available on Hulu.  Highly recommended
• Marc Webb has been named the director of the new Spider-Man movie. How one goes from (500) Days of Summer to Spidey I do not know.
• U2 and Jay-Z Record Haiti Benefit Song. Why is Swizz Beats producing it?
• Part 1 of Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan’s super-long interview with the producers of Lost, Carton Cuse and Damon Lindeof
• The New Yorker did a profile on one of my favorite writers ever, Neil Gaiman
• Who wants to buy me this t-shirt?
• NPR’s Monkey See Blgo explores the battle between buying single-issues of comics versus buying the trade collections. Personally, I can’t break my habit. My expensive, expensive habit.
• The 100 Cheesiest Movie Quotes of All Time
• Tom Caruana made this Wu-Tang/Beatles mash-up, Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers. It sounded like a horrible idea but turned out pretty good.  Download before Apple Corp kills it.
• Slate has come with a great idea for a follow-up to MTV’s Jersey Shore. Massholes.
• The Onion’s AV Club has inducted Requiem For A Dream into its “New Cult Canon”. Maybe it’s time to finally rewatch that movie.
• The Wall Street Journal looks at creative decision to end Lost after six seasons.