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.
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