To Iberia And Beyond

Fairmont Bagels, Anglophonic Cheese Parties and more!

The next day I went to the Biodome which is a collection of enclosed ecosystems that were made out of part of the old Olympic complex from when they had the games back in '76. You start out in the tropical rainforest, then you head to the laurentian forest, st. lawrence marine ecosystem the arctic and then the antarctic (aka penguins behind glass looking adorable).

It also seemed that the ecosystems got smaller as you went through the museum. The most impressive was the tropical rainforest, which was like the one in the Baltimore Aquarium, but a lot bigger. I learned that even though the Scarlet Ibis and the Roseate Spoonbill (which I think was shown in The Princess and the Frog) eat similar foods in and live in the same area, their radically different method of hunting helps the other out and so they can live in peace in the same spot. Hooray for education! There also a very domesticated Common Trumpeter that would just chill out on the path, but don't worry, there were a bunch of signs that told people not to touch or feed the birds.

From the Biodome I went to Atwater to meet up with Dannit for my tour of the city via car. While waiting for her to pick me up I couldn't help but notice the restaurant "Guido and Angelina" -a small Italian chain. I wonder if the term Guido isn't offensive in Canada or what the deal is.

While in the car I explained to her how I went to Rubens on Saint Catherine Street* and got a bagel and cream cheese. It came on a bed of lettuce with a ball of cream cheese in the center with the bagel cut into 4 and set up as arches pointing away from the cream cheese. She said that was an inexcusable first experience with a Montreal bagel so she took me to get a good one at Fairmont Bagels (we aren't supposed to like the other bagel guys, St. Viateur. It's like a Pats vs Genos thing- but healthier).

Then we went to some neighborhood in the north of the city that I would have never thought to visit on my own and had some amazing Indian food. I think that was the moment I realized Montreal was a worthwhile place. She took me to the top of Mont Royal (the view from the University of Montreal is better) and showed me the place where she and her friends would hang out in high school. Getting there involved climbing through a hole in a fence on the far side of a cemetery...I think that was a little off the beaten tourist path.

It was absolutely freezing so we decided that it was time for me to check out the big underground mall where people go to shop and get away from the cold. It is exactly what it sounds like. I don't really like malls and it was extremely crowded so I decided to focus on the fact that I was having a Montreal experience. We poked our heads into a book store and I investigated to see if there was a price difference between an English self-taught book and the same book but for French. I thought there might be a difference as the Quebecois government wants to encourage the use of French so I thought they might subsidize the French book. I was wrong- they were the same price^.

She decided to invite her friends to her house for an impromptu unusual cheese party. Which is how I ended up at an Anglophonic Montreal Unusual Cheese Party. It was pretty fun except I believe that her dog (an old golden retriever) is evil and hates me. Maybe it's just a Golden Retriever thing and that when they get old their eyebrows droop which makes them look evil. I don't know, I'm not a dog person.

All in all one of the more random days I've had and it was pretty fun.

 

*when speaking in English you say the street name in English although you still pronounce the street Saint Dennis the French way even if you are speaking in English.

^Although I should have gone to check them out and see if there was a difference in the tax. Maybe the French self-taught book was tax exempt. Next time I'm in Montreal I'll try to remember to check that out....and yes, I am that dorky.

Saints, Hockey and Anglophones

For all you devout Quebecer Catholics out there, you will be pleased to hear that Father Andre is one step closer to becoming an official saint.  I saw in The Mirror that the Pope proclaimed that a second miracle has been officially linked to Father Andre, which means he has passed all the hurdles to become canonized. I found out about this not because of any celebration in the streets (there were none as far as I know) but because I read it in some free indie newspaper. The church does not seem to have as much sway over life in Quebec as it used to. At any rate, today I went an visited his tomb at the Basilica/Oratory. I came too late to go all the way up for what I am told is a spectacular view, but I got to see the sunset while in front of the engineering school which is on a large hill. So I am pretty fine on the vistas of Montreal front. I am kind of bummed out since I didn't get to see his heart which I'm told is in a glass case somewhere around here.

After the Oratory, I went to meet up with Sophian (the Parisian who came to Montreal to visit his girlfriend who skipped town). We found a bar for a drink and to watch Montreal play Atlanta in hockey. Oddly enough I was the only one who clapped when Atlanta scored. I did not get nearly as many dirty looks as I was hoping to get which was a little disappointing. But on the bright side, Sophian had his first ever nachos and decided they were pretty good (except for the guacamole). He and I had a very long chat about a wide variety of thing (he doesn't like Sarko, is from the Berber part of Algeria that wants to separate, is studying geophysics and how to find oil) but we had a lot of trouble talking about anecdotes.

I told him about a little interaction I had in a bar on Saint Denis and he chuckled a bit. I then pointed out that he has been in Montreal a lot longer than I have but he hasn't told me any stories about his time here so far. The thing is I said that in French and to say "story" I said "un histoire" which evidently didn't mean what I think it did.

After lots of confusion, translations, retranslations and hand motions I realized I had asked him to tell me about booty calls he has made in Montreal. Woopsy. I looked pretty stupid then. But everything was evened out when the bill came (separate checks) and he was short on cash because he didn't know that in Canada, as in the US, prices on the menu do not include tax and tip. The tip thing was particularly crucial as in France I am told you generally do not tip. The waitress and I explained the situation to him and the reasoning behind it to his satisfaction. Yay for bridging cultural gaps!

We then parted and I headed off to Rue Crescent, where I heard my fellow Anglophones hang out. I went to a bar called "Brutopia" where they were having a trivia night. Towards the end the host told us how he's been doing this for three years and tonight is his last time* and how he was thankful we were all here. He said, "you could go to the bar across the street and get date raped, or go next door and spend $9 a pint, but you came here. Thank you"- looks like I dodged a bullet with that one.

I ended up spending most of my time chatting with an Isreali girl named Dennit who has lived in Montreal for 14 years. Tomorrow she is taking me on a tour of the city (after I go to the Biodome) and will drive us up Mont Royal which sounds like fun. She made the offhand comment that I didn't look American because I wasn't "wearing plaid and breaking things." I still don't know how to take that comment.

I rounded off the night with a 99 cent slice of awful pizza (with ranch dressing though, so not too bad) and now I'm off to bed so I can get up early and go to the Biodome- I hear there are penguins there so I am definitely going

*for some reason I keep going to bars for the first time that are having important last times going on.

Collective Memory In Montreal

Today I went to pay homage to the innocent victims of the Montreal Massacre of December 6th, 1989. On that day Marc Lépine, entered the engineering school of Montreal University, separated the women from the men in the classroom and shot the women. He killed 14 women that day.

How a people use memorials speaks volumes for how they view the subject and so their design and placement is generally meticulously planned and worth examining.

I started off my journey at one of the tourist information centers. I was chatting with the attendant, a woman around my age, about my trip so far and possible things for me to do while I am here. Towards the end I asked her if she knew where the memorial was. She said that as she knew one of the victims, she knew the memorial's location very well and marked it on my map.

I then went to the engineering school where the shooting took place and I stopped and asked various people how to get to the memorial. I asked in both English and French and I asked both men and women. No student knew. I went in to the school and asked a security guard. She did not know where it was either, but she called a fellow guard who did and gave me directions.

Eventually I made it to a snow-filed park between two busy roads and near the entrance to a graveyard. The park had two rows of trees and two rows of knee-high blocks. At one end of the park was a sign in French explaining how this park was made in the memory of the victims of the massacre and carries the hope that one day violence will end in this world. There was no explicit mention of this being a targeted attack against women.

It was a sad memorial. Not in the sense that it tried to invoke a spirit of sadness, but in the sense that I felt it was relatively unknown, neglected, mischaracterized, and small. I will admit, I am not a Quebercer. I am not from Montreal. I am not a woman studying to enter a typically "male" field. I cannot claim that how I feel on the subject should be how most of us should feel.

But I think that the difficulty I had in finding the memorial and the fact that it is far away from the school and easy to overlook says a lot about the nature of how violence against women is perceived.

Feux sur Glace: The Welcoming Party

Now Montreal being a "bilingual" and very "European" American city so far seems to mean that a lot of stuff seems really familiar but it's not quite the same. The whole city sort of reminds me of Chicago; the architecture, it being freezing, people caring about hockey; but it's different. One of the biggest differences is that Chicago never had fireworks to welcome me to the city. The event details are in French but I'm pretty sure the gist is that they either decided to welcome me in style by having fireworks, an outdoor concert and free marshmallows for roasting on the Quay, or they were trying to drum up popularity for the area. I'm not quite sure.

So I saw the fireworks over the river, dropped my stuff off at the hostel, had some vegetarian poutain and headed to the Quay. I ended up chatting in broken english and french with a parisian who came to visit his girlfriend in Montreal, but she ended up going "back home" (wherever that is) the day before he got there. We watched the concert together and decided to grab a drink. Meanwhile he goes on about his girlfriend (who I'm pretty sure is cheating on him and wants to dump him) and I tell him about Tim. Our language barrier is too big for me to explain how my situation with Tim was similar to his situation in that plans fell through, not as in my significant other has left me for someone else. We enter the building for the metro and I decide that leaving the only part of town I semi-know with a stranger to get alcohol when I have no Canadian money or friends in town would be a bad idea. So I tell him I changed my mind and am going home. He then asked me for my number, saying he'll call me tomorrow so we can explore the city together. I said sure, gave him my number and left.

He didn't call the next day, they never do.

Instead I bought my long underwear* (glorious!) and went to the Biosphere.

Montreal has a Biosphere, a Biodome and a need for more creativity with names. The Biosphere is pretty baller**. It is a sustainability museum inside a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome, and what's more is that next to it is Team Montreal's house from the 2007 Solar Decathlon. So after visiting the surprisingly well designed and articulate museum (more on that in Energy Matters) I went to the Solar Decathlon house for the 2nd time rounding out a very fine first morning in Montreal.

*At an American Apparel. Eh, I was torn on the decision, but as it was the closest place for me to get something to keep my buns warm, I decided to go for it.
**Haha, get it? Sphere, baller?

Through a Blizzard to Montreal

To get to Montreal I caught a 3:15 AM train from DC to NYC on Saturday morning. Yeah as in the morning of the GREAT SNOWPOCOLYPSE! I left Georgetown on foot at midnight aiming to catch the Circulator or some other bus. I waited at the stop for a while and decided to start walking in the right direction and maybe I'd see a bus sooner or later. I did end up seeing a couple of buses.....they were just stuck on the side of the road in the snow. While carrying my duffel bag and backpack and still about 3.5 miles away from Union Station, I saw a MTA person and asked if the buses were running. He laughed and told me they weren't and that my feet were probably the best way of getting wherever I needed to go.

Good thing I gave myself plenty of time to get there. I was still determined to go since I figured that a train wouldn't be stopped by a few inches of snow.

I did end finding a cab that would take me to the station; several of them were not pulling over, and I was right! My 3:15 left on time!

It did get into Penn Station about an hour and a half late, but I still had time to catch my 8:15 train to Montreal. I had a brief moment of panic when I had to go to the Amtrak Travelers to Canada Papers Inspection cart (a legit cart, they had to roll it elsewhere since it was blocking a line). At that moment I realized I had never looked into what documents were needed for an American to go to Canada for a brief trip. I just thought you needed a passport. In the end, that is all you need.

But moments like that, as in moments where I totally could have messed up and had to suffer huge consequences (like a canceled trip), are why traveling alone isn't that bad.

On the trip up I sat next to a girl from Cameroon/Paris/New York City/Florida named Sophy. She was surprised I knew where Cameroon was and what it looked like on a map (thank you Map of the Modern World). For the parts of the trip that we weren't sleeping, we chatted. This is her second trip to Montreal, last time she meant to come here for just a week but ended up staying for two since she loved the part scene so much. We exchanged numbers at the end and may meet up while we're here.

The trip was uneventful except for three things. The first is that upstate New York is gigantic (8 hours of the train ride are in NY, 1 is waiting at the border and 2 are in Canada). Upstate New York is also a gorgeous area. It was full of frozen rivers, lakes and marshlands. Rolling hills, dense forests, empty farmland. A really stunning place.

The more eventful part was when I woke up at the border and two Canadian border patrollers were standing over me. They laughed at my surprise and said they'd start things off with easy questions. They asked me where I'm from. That does not have a short answer, but I decided to go with saying DC. They ask what do I do. That was easy; I am a student. Then they asked what I study. I have one more semester before I graduate with a BSFS as a Science, Technology and International Affairs Major with a focus on energy and the environment, and I still don't have a good 10 second summary of what I study. I said environmental sciences. They asked who I was visiting in Montreal, I said no one. They asked why I was visiting Montreal in December, I'm still not sure. Then they asked how long I was staying there. I have yet to buy my return ticket, I have no plans for my time here...I said a week.

They let me in.

I originally was not planning on traveling alone. After my less than wonderful trip to Barcelona, I thought that I prefer to travel with someone. I was supposed to come here with a friend from highschool who also goes to college in DC: Tim. Around 11pm, 4 hours before our train left, I get a call from Tim talking about this massive final paper he was working on. Long story short, we decided that it would be best for his sanity and healthy for him to get a full night's sleep, finish the paper the next day and come up to Montreal a day later.

THEN CAME SNOWMAGGEDON. Evidently no one can leave DC anymore...ever again. And they are all buried under 100000 ft of snow. So Tim will not be able to make it up to Montreal for enough time to make the 15 hour train ride each way worthwhile.

The downside to all of this is that now I'm in a different country, which I know few things about, no one really and no plans- alone. The plus side is I now have at least five minutes of conversation more with people when they find out I'm not from around here (i.e. when I say anything).

So here is to always looking for that silver lining*.

*I was told Montreal is warmer when it is cloudy out than when it is sunny. The clouds act as a blanket or something. I don't know, it doesn't seem to make sense and was explained to me in French.

Back to the Beyond: Montreal

Greetings from Montreal! Sorry for the long hiatus, I was back at home, and while many people travel to DC and may blog about that- I think it would be slightly silly to keep a travel blog about my home(ish) city. But now I am back on another merry adventure so I am back to blogging.

I've been kicking around the idea of going to Montreal after spending a good chunk of my time in Aubervilliers talking with Melanie about it, but a little after midterms this semester I decided to go for it and visit Montreal in December.

Now you may ask, as many people here have asked me, "Why in the world would you go to Montreal in the dead of the winter?" and the answer is this: I was never able to truly understand what -9 degrees Celsius meant so the idea of Canada in the winter didn't seem so insane. Before I left DC, I decided it would be good to get a hat, just in case it was a bit nippy out.

After a long journey north and a night of semi-aimlessly walking around Montreal, I decided the first thing I would do this morning (besides change my hostel reservation from 2 people to 1) is get long underwear. I have made few purchases in my life that have made me as happy as these long underwear have.

So expect some more updates as I am here until I decide to go back to New Jersey (which depends on whether or not Amtrak starts running in the Northeast again), but the moral of the story is if you dress properly you can visit anywhere at anytime of the year.

...there may just be no one else around is all.