Oh Canada, Part Un

I've been to some pretty foreign places in my travels. Places where the street signs are indecipherable and the language so bizarre I can't even sound it out well enough to ask the most basic directions. Places where I stick out like a big white Amazon girl.

But Bangkok, Istanbul, Hanoi, Prague were nothing compared to the complete confusion I felt my first day in Montreal, a mere two hour flight from home.

I actually think the shortness of the flight was part of what made my arrival so discombobulating. It takes longer to fly home to Utah, and yet here I was being asked for my passport in an airport where all the signs and billboards are in French. But the customs agent speaks accent-less English and I can't decide what language to speak, so I nod dumbly. The language dilemma only got worse when the bus driver asked for my ticket in a twangy French I barely understood. . . but the bus was full of loud Americans - their ringleader from South Carolina of all places - arguing about U.S. economic policy en route to some big sci-fi convention. It looks like Europe. It feels like Europe. But sci-fi nerds do not fill buses in Europe. Where am I?

Then there was the debit card fiasco. Apparently my new bank likes to be told when I plan to visit another country - even if it's one so close it doesn't even require an international phone call. I tried half a dozen ATMs before panicking - cashless and starving. Twenty minutes on the phone cleared that up, and I walked into the first diner I could find only to discover a menu full of French words I'd never seen before (I thought I was fluent?)

The Quebecois have their own food vocab apparently. And that crazy poutine thing I heard about (the fries covered in cheese curd and gravy) was NOT on the list. So I ordered up something else I thought I'd read about in the guidebook. It was a meat pie: classic French Canadian comfort food that didn't blow my socks off, but was comforting nonetheless. I don't want to know what the meat was, though.

This entire time I'm thoroughly tongue-tied because people are speaking to me in French, but seconds later I hear them speaking perfect English to other customers. I can't decide whether they're native English or French speakers and it seems silly for two native English-language people to be speaking French to each other. So everywhere I turn I'm trying to guess a person's native tongue - which is impossible, I soon discover - and everything I say comes out timid and garbled.

My entire first day in Montreal was inexplicably confusing.

The next day I realized people didn't really care what my native tongue was because they all saw themselves as natively bi-lingual. French or English - didn't matter to them what we spoke. And because they're so used to people speaking garbled versions of both languages everyone was remarkably forgiving of my kindergarten-level verb conjugations. Once I let go of worrying that people actually cared what language we spoke, it just felt more natural to speak French. All the signs are in French anyway, so may as well go with it, right?

I did lots of wandering, ate lots of food, rented a bike, sat in the organ loft of an amazing cathedral, visited a museum and some historic sites, saw lots of free French music concerts and generally enjoyed the gorgeous weather. Everyone said I should be glad I didn't come in the winter. I guess the weather's pretty miserable then, but I'm inclined to forgive that, considering the city seemed practically perfect in every other way.

I took lots of photos which I plan to post with details of my excursion over the next few days. I'll start with the food, of course. I mentioned the tourtiere (meat pie). Didn't take a photo of that. I did try the poutine at a diner that came highly recommended in the little diner in the Latin Quarter.


I ordered the side salad just because a meal of fries smothered in cheese and gravy didn't seem acceptable. I still prefer my fries smothered in ketchup. But the cheese/gravy combo was tasty but you have to eat it fast (never a problem for me) or the fries turn to mush and then you're eating cheesy mashed potatoes and gravy. Speaking of ketchup - they make ketchup flavored potato chips that made me wild. Why doesn't someone sell them in the U.S.?! It's not much different that bbq flavored potato chips - just much better in my book.

My breakfast one day came with a shot glass of amber liquid on the side - which I nearly sent back thinking someone misunderstood my terrible French and thought I'd ordered whisky with my yogurt and granola.

I tasted it first, though. Just maple syrup. Canadians like to put maple syrup in and on everything. Their cute little French bakeries have maple-flavored pastries (which you'd never find in France). Their tastiest cookies and candies are maple. I've always been of fan of maple, so I went ahead and drizzled it on my yogurt/granola/fruit bowl. Drizzling didn't turn out to be enough, so I all-out dumped it on, stirred it up and enjoyed the extra sweet and sticky kick.

I took to ordering maple in everything - a Belgian waffle laced with it. A crepe smothered in it. A soft ice cream cone swirled with it!

While slurping my ice cream down at a concert one night, I saw a beautiful, skinny blond with a little red maple leaf tattoo in the small of her back and my first thought was not "Look how patriotic she is." No, I was wondering instead how she managed to stay so thin with so much maple syrup and fried food at her finger tips. Vive la Canada!