Quick recap of the weekend in Montréal.

I flew up on Friday for a conference and meetings over the weekend that actually continued through today. Both legs of the trip suffered from airline snafus — the one on the way up was the result of a snafu on an airline I wasn’t even flying. Air Canada had apparently had some sort of systems failure and their flights were delayed all over the place, which wasn’t helped by the bit where the Montreal airport was down to one runway because of the weather. Hence, even though we left Dallas on time, we landed in Montreal about forty minutes late, and arrived in customs just behind the Air Algérie flight, which meant that the line was long and didn’t move quickly (45 minutes). Fortunately, there were a number of us on the plane going to this conference, so I wasn’t going through this alone.

Despite this, luggage from my flight still hadn’t started circulating at baggage claim by the time we made it through (20 more minutes), and then out into arrivals hall, where there were a lot of people who were already steamed at the massive delays waiting in line for the one ATM in the airport (10 minutes). Then it was off to taxi queue (50 minutes), and to the hotel (45 minutes), and the line at check-in (25 minutes) after which I was fully prepared to turn around and go home. However, my patience was at an end, and I knew that any attempt to run away would just involve more lines.

I ran into an old friend, a graduate student who’s in Cairo for the year, as I was waiting to check in, and her dinner date had stood her up, so we went off to Ville-Chinois (Chinatown) to search for a restaurant. The food was subpar (we clearly should have asked for recommendations), the beer was watery, and she was jetlagged out of her gourd having flown in from Cairo only hours before, but we had a lovely evening and it was nice that I didn’t have to scrounge for dinner plans. I probably would have settled for McDonald’s, had there been one nearby the hotel.

My Saturday meeting wasn’t until 3, so I spent the morning walking around Vieux Montréal (Old Montreal):

As I mentioned in my last post, they’re serious about French in Montréal. It’s not just that French is the preferred language of communication–and there were several situations in which I found myself trying really hard to communicate with someone who clearly didn’t speak English well or at all (my favorite was when a street bum asked if I had a cigarette and it took me another half block to come up with “Je ne fumez pas.”). It’s that English is frequently relegated to significantly smaller print–if it appears on signage and public spaces at all.

When I took the Métro back to a neighborhood where I’d had dinner the night before, I spent a good ten minutes trying to figure out how to purchase a ticket because all of the print–large and small–was in French. And I was too shy to ask — I’ve managed to navigate in countries where they speak Arabic and Swahili and Hindi! French should not be able to conquer me like this!

The other thing, which goes along with French, Montréal, and Quebec, is the weird obsession with all things Céline Dion. When I was in the Basilica of Notre-Dame, half paying attention to the English language tour, I was busying myself with trying to stabilize my camera while I shot in the low-light environment, and was a little startled to overhear, “And, of course, you will recognize this altarpiece because this is where Céline Dion married René Ángelil in 1994 and the worldwide media was here to cover the event.”

I’m sure that’s the reason you recognize it, too, right?

Montréal is expensive for us Americans right now because our dollar is so weak. When they originally booked this conference, one Canadian dollar was worth around 80 cents. This weekend, it was worth $1.02. Hence, Montréal was even more expensive than we’d expected.

I did have some good food, though. On Saturday, I went out with some of my friends–counterparts from other institutions–and we had a lovely time at a crèpe and fondue place called (what else?) Suzette. Lovely evening.

Now, on Sunday night, I went out with some UT folks. Our new executive assistant, Chris #2, had apparently developed a rappoir with the concierge at the hotel after asking for a recommendation for a restaurant on Saturday night in The Village, Montréal’s answer to the Castro. The result was that Chris #2 had a map with all sorts of interesting features: the leather bar, the tranny bar, the strip club (there were a lot of these — obviously one thinks of taking off all one’s clothing in Montreal during the winter!). Mind you, he’d asked for a restaurant recommendation.

The concierge recommended a restaurant that I shall not name, but rather illustrate:

The concierge swore up and down that we would love it. And so, myself, Chris #2, Jim-from-the-press, Wendy-our-editor, and Jim’s (female) counterpart from another university press went trudging–in my case, limping–out to the Village to find this restaurant. In other words, it was an all girl crowd, consisting of three gay men and two women.

We found the restaurant after walking the length of The Village, which is…interesting. I wasn’t quite used to seeing adverts for male strip shows hanging right out on the street for public consumption, but that’s Canada for you.

Anyway, we got to this place, and there weren’t that many people there. It’s a Sunday night, it’s cold. There are two other occupied tables in the restaurant. We sit down and start looking at the menu, trying to pretend that there’s some way that the exchange rate will work in our favor.

It takes ten minutes for the waitress to come and take our drink order. Also, interestingly enough, there are five of us, but we only have three menus. We decided to order a bottle of Bulgarian red wine — I’ll bet you didn’t know they made red wine in Bulgaria, did you? It was the cheapest wine on the menu, and it wasn’t awful. After twenty minutes more, we order our food.

And we wait.

And we wait. Finally, a single basked bearing a tiny loaf of bread arrives. It vanishes within seconds.

We wait.

And we wait some more.

After an hour and a half, the food arrives. It’s cold, overcooked, and rubbery. By this time, we’re laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation and have moved on to the second bottle of Bulgarian red wine. The food is terrible, we pay our bill, and we get the heck out of dodge.

I spent too much money this weekend, and I’m not sure how I can recoup it all. I ate good chicken, had my first … and possibly last … poutine (yummy, but dear God it’s a heart attack on a plate!), and I decided I really need to learn French. Again.

And for a complete contrast, I’m off to San Diego in a little over a week. It’ll be expensive there, too, but at least it’ll be warm!