The Last Day in Quebec

Since we had to check out by 10 Friday morning, we actually got a good start on the day. We loaded up the car and headed for Montreal. The first stop was a cafe, where Nate and Shannon would hang out for most of the morning.

Ryan, Masato and I went wandering around Old Montreal. This part of the city was reminiscent of old European cities, with a smattering of modernity. Curious about the McDonalds of Canada, we stopped in to one and had some McPoutine. Nothing to write home about, but poutine no less. We walked to the Place d'Armes, where the Basilique Notre Dame stood, but didn't go into the cathedral because Good Friday services were in session. We wandered for about an hour in the Old City before heading to the very posh urban part of town.

While wandering, we decided it would be a good idea to start hitting up the Canadian bars, something we had yet to do, despite the fact that it was maybe 3 in the afternoon. The first in this tour was a branch of Les Trois Brasseurs, a Quebecois chain of brewpubs. They had a variety of "beer cocktails" but we opted to go with a pitcher of their amber beer, which was pretty tasty. The next stop was an Irish pub. Even though every city in the world seems to have at least one Irish pub, we had a jonesing for something Irish. We enjoyed some glasses of Kilkenny while chatting with the bartender, who himself was Canadian, but sounded Irish to my ears. He recommended a good place to go for a beer when we asked for a recommendation. He told us to go to Sherbrooke street and look for a place there. We did, and randomly picked a place with the word "bar" written on the outside. The place we went into turned out to be pretty great. It was a microbrewery that felt generic yet somehow totally unique. They had on tap whatever they happened to have brewed and had chalkboards as menu signs. The tapas looked particularly good, but we only had time for a drink. The hefeweizen we ordered hit the spot.

We hurried to meet Nate and Shannon, who were waiting for us at St. Laurent station. From there we went to our dinner destination, a sushi restaurant. This place, like many in Montreal, it seemed, had all-you-can eat sushi for a very reasonable price. Again we were the first to arrive, and AIESECers, this time from UQAM, the first LC we met, got there shortly afterward. We gorged ourselves on all sorts of sushi and other random Japanese goodies for a good two and a half hours. A fantastic last meal of the trip.

Our last activity in Quebec took place at the famous Altitude 737, a club in the penthouse of one of (if not THE) highest buildings in Montreal. AIESECers from UQAM had arranged to get us (and some of them) on the guest list. The idea of the club was pretty awesome, although it could have executed better. It didn't feel very elite or exclusive or anything, but had a great view. We enjoyed some highly expensive drinks and partied it up for a couple of hours before we decided to get on the road. Rather than find a place to stay for the night, we took off for the border around 2 AM.

The drive itself was fairly uneventful, aside from a stop at the great Martin's supermarket in Maryland and another stop at a Cook Out fast food restaurant in North Carolina and 26 hours later, I was home, safe and sound, in Atlanta. In retrospect, it was a pretty bitchin' Spring Break. It definitely stands up to the adventures had in Wales a year ago and two years ago in Iceland. I owe a lot of the great times to Shannon, who shared with us her awesome lodging and resort, to the AIESECers of UQAM and HEC, for their local hospitality, and to my AIESEC GT travel companions. This trip probably wouldn't have been possible without them and surely wouldn't have been the same.

Sauna and Gala

Thursday went even lazier than Wednesday. Again, I woke up at noon, but instead of taking a hike, I decided to enjoy some other things offered by the resort, the sauna and the pool. We alternated between the pool and sauna and invented a new pool game that involves bouncing balls on the water. I'll spare the details.

Feeling extremely refreshed after several hours of pool and sauna, we got ready for HEC's alumni gala. To me, the word "gala" implies wearing a tux, but I had been talked out of bringing anything very formal. The best we could do was jeans, dress shoes, and button up shirts.

The gala was in a room at HEC, which is the fancy business school of the University of Montreal. It was as pretty and modern as any school I've seen, and had a huge display in the main lobby with current exchange rate, stock indexes, commodity prices, et cetera. Very businessy. In the gala room, there was wine and beer and food, and lots of people dressed slightly more formal than we, but nothing extreme, so we actually fit in.

I talked to lots of AIESECers there, many actually from France, but not any alumni, the people for whom the gala was held. There was a presentation about what the LC was doing, about what AIESEC internationally was doing, and about how alumni donations could help. It was all in French, so I don't know much more than was in English on the slides. After the presentation, we chatted more for awhile, before bringing some of our AIESEC GT flavor to the scene. We Americans broke out our famous dance to the song Bebot by the Black Eyed Peas to the amazement and delight of the crowd. Americans and Canadians alike followed with the dance to Tunak Tunak Tun by Daler Mendhi.

After being very indecisive about where to go for dinner afterwards, we went with many of the attendees for some shawarma. We ate and parted ways.

Wandering and Meeting

Wednesday was spent pretty lazily. I woke up around noon and spend most of the day wandering. I started walking along the trail that led into the woods, with no real destination in mind. There were snowshoes available to use for free from the resort, but I opted not to use them. It wasn't so bad, although it was definitely tiring treading through the half-foot of powdery snow that lay upon the ground, and the trail led away from the resort up a small mountain. Signs warned me that I might encounter snowmobiles along the way, but I came across none. The mountain was pretty peaceful and calm, the only colors being the dark of the trees, the white of the snow and the gray of the sky.

I walked for about half an hour before coming to a sign that indicated I was near an overlook. Having found a destination, I headed where the sign pointed, and as I did, I could hear some loud Anglophones. Judging from the accent, they were either Canadian or Upper-Midwestern. They were at the overlook, hanging out and talking, and were wearing snowshoes. I guessed, since my footprints were the only ones on my path, that they had come from a different trail. I talked with them briefly, snapped some photos of the view, which overlooked the resort and the frozen lake it was on, and went back to the trail. The view would have probably been a lot nicer on a clear day, but the fog didn't allow for great visibility.

From there, I took a trail that led directly away from the valley. No longer having a destination, I decided I'd walk for another 40 minutes and then head back. The idea of hydration came across my mind, so I'd scoop up some powdery snow every now and then and eat it. I walked and walked and walked, turned around and walked back. It was pretty uneventful, but also somehow satisfying. I returned to the resort from the woods and prepared to go to Montreal to meet the AIESECers from HEC for dinner.

We got to the restaurant, St. Hubert, on time, which was unexpected, considering our unfamiliarity with the city. Also unexpectedly, we were the first to arrive. About 15 minutes after we arrived, the HECers began to arrive. Dinner seemed like pretty standard North American fare. We decided that St. Hubert is the Quebecois equivalent of TGI Friday's. There were many AIESEC-related conversations over dinner, mixed with some in French that I didn't understand. I think a lot of it was about the Metro party they were planning. It seemed like a pretty neat idea: they'd get on a metro car at the first station on a line, before anyone else was on it, and set up a sound, system, and party from one end of the line to the other, lasting about 40 minutes. I chatted with Akram, a Tunisian member at HEC, about the possibilities of coming to the US for an AIESEC traineeship, with Sokmean, another member, about the being on the organizing team for International Congress in Brazil (she and I had both applied to be on this team), and other random things.

At the end of the night, we parted ways with the HECers, sprinted to a supermarket to buy some beer before it closed, and went on our way home. The trip, which would normally take less than an hour, took more than twice that, as it had begun to snow pretty heavily.

Goofing Off.

It seemed the first day we were here that the weather would make it difficult to make it out of our small village by car. Fortunately, that turned out not to be true, as we were able to make trips to Montreal on Monday and Tuesday.

On Monday, we left the resort around noonish and headed southward to the area of the nearest metro station. This is apparently what many, many people do, as there was no parking to be found within a mile-ish radius of the station. After driving around for about half an hour, looking for a place to park and making wrong turns that lead us back onto the Canadian equivalent of an interstate highway, we parked in the parking lot of Canadian Tire, hiked over to the station and were on our way into the city. Our first stop was the area around the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM). With hunger as a priority, we went to what was probably a Lebanese fast food restaruant, and devoured some shawarma and shish taouk. Delicious indeed. The group agreed that we needed to smuggle a restaurant like this back across the border and down to Atlanta.

After eating, we began to wander in the city, seemingly with no destination. We wandered through what might have been the Old City, stopping in a souvenir shop that had as much Mid-Eastern and Egyptian souvenirs as it did Montrealese. The journey then led us slowly to the river, with many stops to do various things in the snow that we don't normally have the opportunity to do. I'll put some pictures of this on here later. We wandered for probably a good hour and a half and decided it was a good time for some coffee. We found a Turkish-owned cafe and enjoyed some Turkish coffee, after which the proprietoress read our coffee-ground fortunes. Mine was the worst.

Before leaving the cafe, I phoned the AIESEC office at UQAM, as I'd been in contact with a UQAM alumna by text throughout the day. They agreed to send someone to the metro station to meet us and show us in. The university was quite conveniently attached to the metro station itself. We were shown into the office and met some of the LC members and chit chatted about what we'd been doing, what we wanted to do, about AIESEC in general and whatnot. They suggested we go with them to the university bistro/bar for a beer or two. From my experience in Germany, university bars are always a good idea. Cheap drinks and lots of students to talk to. We hung out there and talked for awhile, agreeing to come back there the next night to watch a hockey game between Montreal and St. Louis. At sometime between 6 and 7, we left for home, taking the metro out of the city and driving away to our quiet village.

Tuesday went quite similarly, except the wandering around was related to getting something to eat. We spent a half-hour looking for a famous poutine restaurant. For those who are unfamiliar with poutine, it is french fries topped with gravy and cheese curds. Sounds slightly strange, but is pretty satisfying in a sort of barbaric way. This place had a great variety of different poutines, which included additional toppings such as bacon, mushrooms, pepperoni, hot dogs, ground beef, bell peppers, onions, et cetera. Mine in particular had bacon, hot dogs (listed on the menu as "saucisse fumée" i.e. smoked sausage) and mushrooms on it. This lunch was enough to hold me over until breakfast this morning. There are pictures of this somewhere.

After poutine, we thought it would be a good idea to look around at McGill University, which is in the heart of urban Montreal. One would think it would be easy to find a university that has a metro station named after it, but we were unsuccessful. We wandered around this pretty posh area of the city, which looks apparently like the posher parts of NYC for awhile and were overcome by a desire for caffiene as a result of our poutine-induced fatigue. We found a place, the Café Dèpôt, and hung out there, recovering from a lot of food and a little bit of walking. We had planned to go to a museum the same day, since we could get in for free with our weekly metro passes, but that was only until 5 PM, and it was slightly later than that. So with the museum option gone, we hung out a bit longer before leaving to meet the AIESECers from UQAM to watch the hockey game.

The evening's festivity quickly got underway before the hockey game had a chance to start. We met and chatted with several of the LC members for a bit before getting going with a game of quarters (I think that's what the game is called, the one where you bounce a quarter into a glass.) It worked out well, since the Canadian quarter is almost identical in size and weight to our own. After a bit of that, we changed to a game whose name I can't remember, where each person playing chooses a gesture. There is a rhythm to the game that everyone keeps, particularly the one from "We Will Rock You". One must do his/her gesture, then that of someone else to the rhythm, effectively passing "it" on to the person whose gesture he/she has just done. The person to whom "it" was just passes, must continue in the rhythm, first doing his/her own, and then that of someone else. In the case that someone makes a mistake, he/she must drink. This game went on for a pretty long time, and my memory gets progressively unclear from this point.

The most distinct thing I remember after this point was a conversation I had with an LC member about baseball in Montreal, although I don't remember his name. We lamented the moving of the Expos, although I can't remember his reason for the Expos' failure as a franchise. Possibly the ownership. It seemed to me, in my four days here, that baseball was popular as a sport, both to play and watch, in Quebec. Although it didn't compare to hockey, pro baseball definitely had a place here. I told him about how I'd watched some of the best Expos come into pro ball in single-a ball, for the Albany Polecats, Vlad Guererro being the one big name. I guess it was the biggest way I was connected to the Expos. He told me that when he's rich someday, he'll bring a baseball team back to Montreal.

Not much happened after that, we said goodbye to the AIESECers and were on our way. We're planning to meet them for all-you-can eat sushi on Friday night, something I'm considering fasting until. We haven't really accomplished as much as I'd have like to, in terms of seeing Montreal, but what we have done has been great, and we've met some pretty awesome people along the way. We're meeting another Montreal LC, HEC, tonight for dinner, so there's only more to come...

Cabane à Sucre

After napping the day away, tired from a brief shopping excursion to Saint Saveur, we piled in the car to drive to Vince's place. At the house, the rest of the party introduced themselves to the family, and we were shortly on our way. The drive, which included a detour as a result of a missed turn by Vince, was short. We tried to play a road trip game called "Radio", but were pretty unsuccessful. We arrived at the cabane with 15 minutes to spare, so we wandered around the outside of the building. There were rabbits and goats.

We got inside and there were long tables and people eating at them family-style. It was decorated like an old time cabin or lodge or something. We paid before eating and sat down at a long table. Our first course was split pea soup and some bread with butter and sweet onion something to spread on it. Nothing special, but tasty no less. The next food came out, ham and bacon. And it wasn't "Canadian" bacon, but similar to regular bacon (in strips) but much thicker and crispier. They were to be eaten with an excess of maple syrup, for which the season had just begun. Apparently, the early maple syrup is the best, so we were getting the best maple syrup. There was also sausage and baked beans, which were also to be drenched in syrup. Yum. At some point during the meal, Vince asked around who wanted beer, and went and got a pitcher of it to share with the table. Toward the end of each person's glass, the beer, too was consumed with a bit of maple syrup, just as an experiment. Surprisingly, the Canadian tactic of adding maple syrup to everything in a meal worked out. We're going to try to sell the idea of this Maple Beer to Labatt later this week. The meal ended with pancakes and coffee for dessert, both of which received some of the special ingredient.

The conversation during the meal revolved between the French language, American politics, the inner workings of maple syrup, travel, careers, and probably many other things that I don't remember. Vince's children even spoke some English here and there, which is probably one of the reasons he wanted us to have dinner with his family. Overall, it was a very pleasant dinner.

Filled and satisfied, we proceeded to another part of the building, the name of which I can't remember, but was the defining part of the "Sugar Cabin". Here there was a strange looking pump thing in the corner, and three tubs of snow on a table. The idea was to pour hot maple syrup on the snow, wait for it to congeal a bit, and the roll it up onto a popsicle stick and eat it. I did this, and it was delicious. The pump thing in the corner was actually a cow-milking device that had been converted to do another sort of work. There was a network of tubes running from maple trees in the area, and this thing, rather than pulling milk from various cows, extracted the sap through these tubes into the cabin. Very clever.

Shortly after this, it was goodbye. We thanked them and drove back to the resort.

The Return.

So I've gone a pretty long time without making a post to this, despite the fact that much of that time was spent traveling. After that post, I went on to travel to Turkey, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic, several places in Germany, France, and the Basque Country. Looking back, I should have been posting all along, or at least keeping some kind of written record, but alas, I have nothing of that sort.

It is another random act of hospitality that has brought me to make the first post in I don't know how many months. Right now I'm in Quebec for my Spring Break with some AIESECers from GT and one from Yale. We spent about 26 hours getting from Georgia up here and had just arrived at the resort at which we're staying. We had planned on easily going from there to Montreal each day, having no idea how much snow had accumulated on the quebecois ground this winter. It was dangerous coming onto highways via on-ramps because of the snow wall separating them. Many of the street signs have been covered by snow. Add to that icy roads and fog, and the 40km drive becomes much less appealing, especially in a Honda Civic with worn tires.

We had decided to drive into town, St. Hippolyte, which was about a 3 minute drive away, to get some food and drink for the night after arriving. I trying in vain to get the car up the hill from the parking lot in the freezing slush, when a man pulled up on his snowmobile (Ski-Doo in the colloquial) which was pulling a sort of sled with two children in the back. He saw me struggling and asked if he could give it a try, and, figuring he was much better versed in snow driving, I let him have at it. He was able to fish-tail the Civic a bit farther up the hill than I did, but still didn't conquer it. He told us the store wasn't far away and that it was easily walkable and offered us a ride in the sled behind the snowmobile. No one but me was interested; the others said they would walk and meet me at the store.

Dressed more for the streets of Montreal than for a sled ride (long wool coat, jeans, scarf, hat, boots, no gloves), I sat down in the back of the sled, which had a couch cushion in it. He took off up the hill, around some bends in the snow-covered road, and toward the lake, which was thoroughly frozen. I was getting a little of the blowing snow on me, but so far, so comfortable. I saw the man's son reach out and grab a handful of the powdery snow as we drove, pack a snowball, and chuck it at his sister. I decided to do the same, but lobbed this one at the back of the son's head. He retaliated. Very quickly it escalated into a free-for-all, with me on the losing end because of my unpreparedness for such a battle. By the middle of the ride, my jacket was pretty well covered in snow and my hands almost totally numb. The son handed me his snow goggles, perhaps feeling sorry for me. I was only mildly uncomfortable, but having a great time.

The snowmobile journey ended at the man's house, which was very close to the store and quite luxurious-looking. He invited me inside to warm up and have a cup of coffee, and I couldn't refuse. It was at this point that he introduced himself and his family; his name was Vince. While the coffee was brewing I talked to Vince about why we came to Quebec, what we were planning on doing, what he thought would be fun to do, et cetera. From what I had read before coming, only 10% of Quebecois outside Montreal spoke much English. This turned out not to be so true. His English was pretty good and he said that figure was probably closer to 50%.

He poured the coffee and we sat down to watch the French Canadian version of The Weather Channel to figure out what the rest of the week would entail, when would be good to travel to Montreal, and if we even had a chance of going to Quebec City. Apparently, this was the harshest winter Quebec had seen in about 10 years, and it should have been significantly better. But from the report, it looked like we'd be remaining in the wilderness for at least the next few days.

Vince gave me a ride to the store to meet the others, who were just arriving there. We chatted about going to a place called Cabane à Sucre for some traditional (maybe even ritualistic) quebecois food soon. Because the maple syrup season was just beginning, we had arrived for the perfect time for the food that involves lots of maple syrup. After buying what we needed, and getting some further recommendations on which Canadian beer to buy, which seasonal sweets are good, et alii, it was time to go back. Shannon, of Yale, had asked Vince if he could give us a ride back to the resort, and he agreed. As we were getting out of the truck at the resort, Nate, of GT, asked Vince if he could get a picture with us, and he declined. He said, "Come to dinner at Cabane à Sucre tomorrow night, and we can get a picture then." Continuing the habit of taking up strangers on any offers to be hospitable, we agreed. We'll be meeting Vince and his family this evening for a very quebecois dinner at Cabane à Sucre.

I've heard bad things about the rift between Francophones and Anglophones in Quebec, but have experienced no such thing. The people so far have been as friendly as any I've come across. Maybe I'm just lucky...