Montreal

So it's been a little longer than "tomorrow" since I said I'd write this post—going back to work sort of gobbled up my time and energy. But last night as James and I sat watching a marathon of "House" reruns in a semivegetative state, I thought to myself, "What a monumental waste of time and life," and said aloud, "Let's have a TV-free week." James agreed, and I tossed a blanket over the TV set. So tonight I'm listening to live concerts on All Songs Considered podcasts (first Wilco, and now Josh Ritter) while James is at church leading a discussion on the film "Pay It Forward." And I figure I'll multitask and write about Montreal while listening to Josh Ritter.

I hadn't been to Montreal since I was a kid, and James had never been, and one of our favorite bands (Cinematic Orchestra, a hard-to-categorize sort of electronica jazz band) was scheduled to play there on August 30, so we made that our vacation destination this summer. We left on Thursday and drove the 4 hours to the border, thinking what great time we were making. When our turn finally came to greet the border guard, she took a look at our passports and sent us to the Customs/Immigration building with a yellow slip of paper. We dutifully went into the building and handed over our passports and the yellow paper to another border guard who told us to have a seat and wait to be called. After about an hour sitting around with a dozen other folks who looked as perplexed as we were about why we were here, we (barely) heard our names called and went back over to the bulletproof window to be interrogated about our reason for wanting to enter Canada, how long we would be staying, where we were staying (at which point I had to go back out to the car to get our hotel reservation receipt to prove we really did have a room waiting for us), what states we'd each lived in over our entire lives (quite a list for both of us!), and—with the microphone turned off for "privacy"—whether or not we'd ever been arrested. The guard wrote everything down and then sent us back to the waiting area, where James and I recited the relevant parts of "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" and speculated on what heinous acts the other folks around us might have committed to be refused entry into Canada. One poor guy had to bring in all his shopping bags from a trip to the mall somewhere (Plattsburgh, perhaps?) so the customs agent could go through them and make sure he didn't have any contraband from Sears.

We're definitely not in the innocent 20th century anymore. We used to zip across the border into Canada from our cottage in northern NY with a quick recital of what city we were each born in and "What's the purpose of your visit?"—"Vacation." With a nod from the guard we'd be on our way. The most nerve-wracking border crossings were when we snuck dogs without proof of vaccinations (the dogs had their shots, we'd just forgotten to bring the papers proving it) across the border. You can bet we wouldn't get away with that now! We never did find out why we were detained. Perhaps it was the London stamps on our passports. Maybe it was James's earrings. Who knows?

Anyway, we did finally get in and thoroughly enjoyed our 4 days in Montreal. Some of my high school French started to come back to me, and we bought a Québecois French dictionary so we can bone up before our next trip. It's also a great read:

At the Airport:

• J'ai perdu mon billet — "I have lost my ticket"
• J'ai perdu ma carte d'embarquement — "I have lost my boarding pass"
• J'ai perdu mes bagages — "I have lost my luggage"
• Ces sacs ne sont pas à moi — "These bags are not mine"
• Ma valise a été endommagée — "My suitcase was damaged"
• J'ai manqué mon vol/ma correspondance — "I have missed my flight/my connection"
• Annuié — "Canceled"
• Retardé — "Delayed"

That person is having a seriously bad trip. It does get better, though, apparently:

• Etes-vous marié? — "Are you married?"
• Je suis célibataire — "I am single"
• Avez-vous un copain/une copine? — "Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend?"
• Pouvons-nous avoir des chambres attenantes? — "Can we have adjoining rooms?"
• Pourriez-vous remplir le minibar, s'il vous plait? — "Can you fill the minibar, please?"

It goes on, but you get the picture. Speaking of pictures, I took a bunch and have posted them on the slideshow at the bottom of this page. So take a look if you want to see Montreal through my eyes.

We were allowed back into the US on Monday without any argument—it did, however, take 2 HOURS to get through the gates given the Labor Day weekend crowd, killing any hopes of making good time on the way home. For lunch we stopped at an "English pub" in Plattsburgh and had meat pies, satisfying my Anglo-Saxon genetic need for protein in a pastry shell with lots of potatoes.

A few days of pseudo-European self-indulgence followed by a return to a lovely American town where the tomatoes are finally ripe and little baby eggplants are peeking out from under the leaves—mmmmm…a fine vacation.