when foreign is a relative thing (part 1)
The border crossing into Canada at Highgate Springs, Vermont does not have cameras that take very obvious photos of you as you roll up to the booth. It does not have mirrors in the road surface meant to reveal human traffic strapped to your suspension. It does not have a parliamentary commission breathing down its neck asking why it did not catch terrorists prior to 9/11. It has, instead, a bored-looking guard who greets you with a sleepy "Hello Bonjour1."
"Good Evening."
"Purpose for visit?"
"Kraftwerk Concert. Vacation."
"Length of visit?"
"The weekend."
"Do you have any drugs? alcohol? tobacco?"
"No."
"Any ... umm ... weapons?"
"No."
"Any ... uh ... I know I'm forgetting one more. Any meat?"
"are you hungry? No."
"Welcome to Canada, then. Land of gun owning mad cattle ranchers loved by Michael Moore who have legalized marijuana but still ask for it at customs, because, you know, you might want to share."
Folks are usually surprised when I say that I haven't been to Montreal. I've been to the border six times, but each time was for the renewal of a TN visa, a stressful process that usually left me too psychologically drained to think of additional travelling. However, silentq has taken it upon herself to rehabilitate my wayward Canadian-ness, and that's included reintroducing me to skiing and dragging me up to Montreal. Well, dragging is the wrong word. Tempting me with Kraftwerk tickets and a weekend at a stunningly gorgeous bed and breakfast is more accurate.
We arrived in Montreal at eleven in the evening, on the leading edge of exhaustion. We had dropped off arcanus at evildrgo's apartment and were driving through downtown Montreal, trying to parse out the map while the last bits of energy and coherence were draining out of our brain. Turn at this street, right? No, next one? Ok. Wait, I think we need to be another street over. Turn here. It's on this street. Past the youth hostel. Perhaps it's that building. The one covered in stars.
The innkeepers had strung white Christmas lights in the trees outside the building, shaping them like the stars from St. Exupery's stories, and the rest of the inn carried on with that motif, making the itinerant traveler feel like they've just stepped into a fairy tale, and reached the part where the heroes have found the kindly wizard's sanctuary in the middle of a wolf infested forest. Or, rather, found the warm jacuzzi at the end of the butt-numbing 6 hour road trip. Ah, jacuzzi.
However, before we indulged in the perks and pleasures of our room, silentq and I headed out to the downtown strip of Ste. Catherine's Street, to locate a bank machine. It was there that I was introduced to the all-night party that is Ste. Catherine's on a weekend, where college kids are drawn by low drinking age laws and strip clubs to load up on alcohol and sex. If you ever wanted a stellar example of the accomplishments of NAFTA, witness the phenomenon of American kids converging on Canadian cities to binge on Mexican tequila. I suppose, if I were of a different mettle, I would've found the experience exhilirating, but dodging puddles of vomit and press gangs of cell phone toting alcoholics was just tiring, so we retired to the jacuzzi and bed.
The following day started with the smell of fresh croissants baking in the kitchen two floors down, which is always an excellent way to start the day. It was soon followed by a still sleepy silentq nuzzling into the hollow between my chin and neck and making a very contant 'mmmmm...' sigh, which is also an excellent way to start the day. We eventually made our way down to the sun-splashed lobby, to partake in croissants, homemade waffles and fresh squeezed orange juice while figuring out plans for the day. brigid and plankton, who had arrived earlier the previous evening, came down a little later, and we swapped notes over where we going and what we were doing before heading out into the city once more.
An old friend once mentioned to me that every metro stop in Montreal sounded like it was named after a chateau. My corollary to that is every street seemed like it was named after a saint. There's an interesting sense of ubiquitous, low-frequency Catholicism that pervades Montreal. Americans might fret about the growing influence and power of the Religious Right, but most cities in the US don't have a church at almost every other block. They don't have reconditioned monasteries and seminaries as major civic attractions. While California might rival Quebec in the sheer number of places that have the word "Saint" as a prefix, there's still this secular detachment in Californian psyches that relegates Spanish names like "San Jose" or "San Francisco" to the same set of foreign obfuscation as towns named after Indian tribes. They never think of San Jose as the "City of St. Joseph" because there's little in the city that marks it as dedicated to any religion besides the Cult of .COM, but Montreal, while not dedicated to any specific saint, wears its Catholic heritage with the sort of muted ferverence that can only come from old frontier towns, weighed down by the millions of prayers uttered by residents to get them through yet another brutal winter.
That was less obvious in the Basilique Notre Dame, which is certainly impressive in its size and decoration, and more demonstrated in the Oratoire St-Joseph, a church built around the legacy of Andre Bessette, a faith healer known for healing cripples and the infirm. There's a hall in the midst of the church complex lit with walls of votive candles, tiny lights each representing a prayer for a cancer victim or a paraplegic, and the walls are flanked by ranks of abandoned wooden crutches as non-verbal testimony to hope and faith with hints to the overly mystical aspect of Catholicism from my youth.
( to be continued: on the second part of our program: Kraftwerk, 24 hour bagels, and being spoiled on the smoking ban)
1 and for a moment one might imagine a comic strip with a Canadian character who always has a bilingual dialogue balloon whenever he speaks.
"Good Evening."
"Purpose for visit?"
"Kraftwerk Concert. Vacation."
"Length of visit?"
"The weekend."
"Do you have any drugs? alcohol? tobacco?"
"No."
"Any ... umm ... weapons?"
"No."
"Any ... uh ... I know I'm forgetting one more. Any meat?"
"are you hungry? No."
"Welcome to Canada, then. Land of gun owning mad cattle ranchers loved by Michael Moore who have legalized marijuana but still ask for it at customs, because, you know, you might want to share."
Folks are usually surprised when I say that I haven't been to Montreal. I've been to the border six times, but each time was for the renewal of a TN visa, a stressful process that usually left me too psychologically drained to think of additional travelling. However, silentq has taken it upon herself to rehabilitate my wayward Canadian-ness, and that's included reintroducing me to skiing and dragging me up to Montreal. Well, dragging is the wrong word. Tempting me with Kraftwerk tickets and a weekend at a stunningly gorgeous bed and breakfast is more accurate.
We arrived in Montreal at eleven in the evening, on the leading edge of exhaustion. We had dropped off arcanus at evildrgo's apartment and were driving through downtown Montreal, trying to parse out the map while the last bits of energy and coherence were draining out of our brain. Turn at this street, right? No, next one? Ok. Wait, I think we need to be another street over. Turn here. It's on this street. Past the youth hostel. Perhaps it's that building. The one covered in stars.
The innkeepers had strung white Christmas lights in the trees outside the building, shaping them like the stars from St. Exupery's stories, and the rest of the inn carried on with that motif, making the itinerant traveler feel like they've just stepped into a fairy tale, and reached the part where the heroes have found the kindly wizard's sanctuary in the middle of a wolf infested forest. Or, rather, found the warm jacuzzi at the end of the butt-numbing 6 hour road trip. Ah, jacuzzi.
However, before we indulged in the perks and pleasures of our room, silentq and I headed out to the downtown strip of Ste. Catherine's Street, to locate a bank machine. It was there that I was introduced to the all-night party that is Ste. Catherine's on a weekend, where college kids are drawn by low drinking age laws and strip clubs to load up on alcohol and sex. If you ever wanted a stellar example of the accomplishments of NAFTA, witness the phenomenon of American kids converging on Canadian cities to binge on Mexican tequila. I suppose, if I were of a different mettle, I would've found the experience exhilirating, but dodging puddles of vomit and press gangs of cell phone toting alcoholics was just tiring, so we retired to the jacuzzi and bed.
The following day started with the smell of fresh croissants baking in the kitchen two floors down, which is always an excellent way to start the day. It was soon followed by a still sleepy silentq nuzzling into the hollow between my chin and neck and making a very contant 'mmmmm...' sigh, which is also an excellent way to start the day. We eventually made our way down to the sun-splashed lobby, to partake in croissants, homemade waffles and fresh squeezed orange juice while figuring out plans for the day. brigid and plankton, who had arrived earlier the previous evening, came down a little later, and we swapped notes over where we going and what we were doing before heading out into the city once more.
An old friend once mentioned to me that every metro stop in Montreal sounded like it was named after a chateau. My corollary to that is every street seemed like it was named after a saint. There's an interesting sense of ubiquitous, low-frequency Catholicism that pervades Montreal. Americans might fret about the growing influence and power of the Religious Right, but most cities in the US don't have a church at almost every other block. They don't have reconditioned monasteries and seminaries as major civic attractions. While California might rival Quebec in the sheer number of places that have the word "Saint" as a prefix, there's still this secular detachment in Californian psyches that relegates Spanish names like "San Jose" or "San Francisco" to the same set of foreign obfuscation as towns named after Indian tribes. They never think of San Jose as the "City of St. Joseph" because there's little in the city that marks it as dedicated to any religion besides the Cult of .COM, but Montreal, while not dedicated to any specific saint, wears its Catholic heritage with the sort of muted ferverence that can only come from old frontier towns, weighed down by the millions of prayers uttered by residents to get them through yet another brutal winter.
That was less obvious in the Basilique Notre Dame, which is certainly impressive in its size and decoration, and more demonstrated in the Oratoire St-Joseph, a church built around the legacy of Andre Bessette, a faith healer known for healing cripples and the infirm. There's a hall in the midst of the church complex lit with walls of votive candles, tiny lights each representing a prayer for a cancer victim or a paraplegic, and the walls are flanked by ranks of abandoned wooden crutches as non-verbal testimony to hope and faith with hints to the overly mystical aspect of Catholicism from my youth.
( to be continued: on the second part of our program: Kraftwerk, 24 hour bagels, and being spoiled on the smoking ban)
1 and for a moment one might imagine a comic strip with a Canadian character who always has a bilingual dialogue balloon whenever he speaks.