Croissants in squalor

Here are a couple "funny" stories from the weekend that are funny because they are humourous as well as eerily coincidental, or, as I'm more inclined to say, synchronistic:

When we first got into Montreal on Friday, Heather and I broke away from the group and went looking for a payphone and a bank. We stood waiting to cross the street. "Every time I'm in Montreal I bump into someone I know," she said. Five seconds later a guy sticks his head out of the passenger seat window of his car and yells, "Heather!" We looked at each other. "See!"

Before Heather and I left for Montreal we discussed how fun it would be to run around like clowns in the city. Like literal clowns. Like lady clowns who wear crazy dresses, walk casually into a Pharma Prix and slather on all their tester make-up particularly of the pasty white variety, put on a big red nose and commence with the running around and the shit-disturbing. Yesterday we were walking from Jocelyn's place (located in a pleasant residential area reminiscent of Toronto's Leaside) on our way to the Anarchist Book Fair on a street that was bustling with yard sales. The third one we passed happened to have a rainbow-coloured afro-wig sitting on a table, waiting for Heather to pick it up for the take-home price of 50 cents. Like a dream come true, Heather put the wig on her head and became the clown she was destined to be. It was glorious. Every child we walked by fell in love with her, drivers honked at her, old men started cheeky conversations with her. We were stopped at an intersection waiting to cross when we heard a honking horn from the street. In the driver's seat of the small white car sat a clown in full make-up, waving at us. We laughed in shock and waved back as the light turned green and he sped away, his tires screeching from the abrupt start.

On Friday night when we checked out the supposed-but-never-located bonfire on the mountain, I'm 95% sure I left my cell phone at the statue where people played nice music. By Saturday I knew it was gone but for some reason I wasn't worried about its absence at all. Maybe because I'm here and I have a computer, and if using a phone became a necessity, I could use a calling card. I knew when I got back to Toronto I'd probably have to buy another one, but that's not a big deal, I don't really care, I'll survive. Yesterday evening, while we were packing to get back on the road and hang out with punks at Deathchurch, Heather checks her phone and gasps. "What?" I ask. "It's Graeme - he has your cell phone!" Ha! "Someone found your phone and texted him - no wonder you were so calm! You knew it was coming back!"

Yesterday was an interesting time. We walked an hour to the Anarchist Book Fair which is a big event for Montreal's political punk scene. It took place in an elementary school and when we saw the sea of black leather jackets and metal studs from the street, we knew we were at the right place. As we walked into the crowd Heather and Michaela recognized friends and we sat with them on the grass, shared some food, then dispersed into the main event taking place in the auditorium inside. I walked in and a wall of thick sweaty air hit my body and my face immediately. The place was packed. I didn't have any cash money on me because my stupid ass left my debit card at my mom's house, and I doubt the anarchists accept Visa. So I walked around and eyed all the delicious looking books and zines and patches and screen-printed t-shirts with a sort of melancholic detachment because I couldn't have them, though I wanted to support these artists and activists for their effort and energy, yet acknowledging it wasn't worth my energy to be butthurt about all the stuff I couldn't afford. One day I'll have money, it just wasn't that day.

I went outside and sat on the grass reading a free zine about the book fair in 2008. It was well-produced so I guess they didn't want to throw it away in the name of being outdated, which was kinda cool. Jocelyn sat with me too, and then I layed down. Though I had a good sleep on the floor the night before, it couldn't have been more than 4 hours of shut-eye. In the crowd of "anarchists," I stood out. I was wearing a brightly-coloured shirt, grey pants and dirty very-off-white flats. Everyone else was wearing black, and if they weren't wearing black they had tattoos to compensate. Heather and I noticed later that very rarely do the girls have hair below their shoulders, and if they do, it's dreaded. Guys can have long hair though. At any rate, I wasn't feeling all that comfortable in the crowd, so it was a relief when we headed for the spinny-thinga-majiggy in the playground. It was one of those crazy things with ropes and nets and you climb 'em and someone spins 'em, and about fifteen kids can hang off 'em at a time? Yeah? Yeah. Well, we hung out on there and it was awesome. I had a blast hanging out the kids - they were intelligent, articulate, and funny. When Jocelyn and Heather went back to the book fair, I stayed with Bishop, Kayla, and Luba. We swung on the swings, played tag, and talked.

Things got a little out of hand when I lacked the discretion required to NOT throw children into the sand, because I did that, with the best of intentions but the least amount of foresight, and tossed Bishop, who landed on his face and started crying. He threw sand at me and said, "You're not very nice at all." I said I was sorry, that I didn't mean to hurt him, and the girls around agreed. "She didn't mean to, Bishop, we were just playing. It was an accident," Kayla said, Bishop's 11-year-old sister. We walked to a water fountain where we washed him up - he wasn't bleeding and there was barely a scratch, I think he was mostly wounded emotionally. After a few moments of brooding silence from him he said, "I'm going to tell on you!" and he ran to the nearest adult, a young guy from the book fair. "It was HER!" he yelled. "I'm sorry, Bishop. Will you forgive me?" I asked. He shook his head yes, I kissed his head, and he ran to play on the zip line. Turns out the guy he ran to was just a guy, someone who had been around the playground as long as I had. He figured Bishop just needed to tell someone. Later we all played tag again and everything was fine. Bishop and I pretended to kick each other and he reminded me that I had told him while he was crying that he could kick me if it would make him feel better. At the time he shook his head no, but now he was in the mood for a little kick-Andrea's-assage. I said, "okay, you can kick me, but I'm going to cry and scream." He said, no, and then okay, and prepared himself to kick. He tapped my leg with his foot as hard as he could and I belted OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!! and fell on the ground squirming and crying and holding my leg. Then I told them I had to go but that I had to limp home because my leg was broken. We said our goodbyes and we parted.

Heather and Michaela stayed at the fair while Jocelyn and I walked home, which felt arduous, never-ending, and occasionally unbearable. We bought 2 for $1 oranges and they were spectacular - when I felt hungry and dead before, I felt satisfied and revitalized afterward. We got home and made and avocado smoothie an vegged around for a while. I was still pretty tired when Heather and Michaela got in, and even more when Heather and I left. A bit cranky too.

We were trying to find a place called Deathchurch, a converted church now a punk sanctuary. It was amazing to see. Everyone was really nice, polite, and well-behaved. When I was there I didn't see any crazy streetkid antics which would probably be par-of-course in Toronto. Or maybe I just expect that behavior. All I know is that I was pleasantly surprised. However, I stood out and it still made me a bit uncomfortable, which is my own fault because no one was going out of their way to make me feel alienated. I was just... out of my element. Heather and Michaela were having a great time and my experience was getting darker, darker and darker. We went inside the church and the wall of sweaty air was 20x more intense than the book fair auditorium earlier that day. I sat on a couch in the back with all our stuff, struggling to breath the last bits of oxygen still left in the room while the girls danced. In any other circumstance, I'd be totally down for moshing. I just felt weird and didn't want to get up, but I also didn't want to be there anymore. Later when we were outside I told Heather I was gonna go for a walk. I found a parkette by a deserted main street, peed in a bush, sat on a bench and wrote in my notebook. It was very therapeutic to be alone again, though I was weary of anyone walking by. No one is raping me, don't even think about it guy across the street. Hey you! Over there! No means no, okay?! And I wrote my feelings down in a notebook under the light of the moon.

I went back so Heather wouldn't be too worried, got bored again and went back to the parkette. Last night we planned to stay with Liat at her squat, and Heather came and got me when it was time to go. I had only one misgiving about squatting and that was my contact lenses. I was dumb enough to not bring my glasses which I reiterate is a DUMB idea, and I was worried I'd have to take them out of my eyes in the dark without a mirror. I grew a bit more comfortable with the idea after Liat explained the layout and how it came to be a squat and when the time came, everything was fine.

We walked as a group of ten after the show for about 45 minutes until we came to a big door beside a closed shop. Up the stairs was a legit set of apartments - the tenets paid rent - but in the hallway was a big window with a piece of swinging plywood attached at the hinges. We pushed it open and walked onto a roof with couches, beds, and beer bottles. I followed Liat across a boardwalk that led to a sliding backdoor to the next apartment. This was the squat. An abandoned two-level apartment with blue laminate flooring and windows that overlooked the street. We walked towards a flat mattress in the living room area, where the sounds of cars and streetlights filled the room. Liat had a flashlight and I took my contacts out with ease, making sure they landed in their appropriate casing. I slept on the left side, Heather in the middle, Liat on the right, and David in a sleeping bag at our feet. Heather left earlier in the morning to find breakfast, and I stayed behind to sleep some more. When I did get up, around 11:00, successfully putting in my contacts in a neighbor's bathroom, I decided I would go to a cafe around Mont-Royal because we planned to go to Tam Tams later today.

And here I am at the cafe about to go to Tam Tams. It's a wonderful place on St. Denis called Marins and Fanny Chocolatier. I treated myself to a veggie panini, an americano and a chocolate-almond croissant. Thank goodness for visa.

We might be grabbing a rideshare this evening, or tomorrow morning to get back to Toronto. We'll see when we get there! Gotta find Heather first! PAYCE!

Taste-test traveling in Montreal

Hello everyone! Welcome back to my travel blog. I wrote the following post before I went to Montreal for the weekend, and a surprising amount has changed in my perspective since I left. I considered re-writing the entire "first post" of my adventure since it hadn't been posted yet, but I think it contains valuable information pertaining to my lack-of-travel world view, making the post an interesting read and an awesome mental starting point for my upcoming journey to BC. Enjoy!

* * * * *

So six months ago I went to India looking for adventure.

I wet my palate by flying, on my first trip out of Canada, all twenty-two hours of sky-time, solo. I met nice people who took me in and made sure I got to my destination in one piece. When I got to the airport in Cochin, I was hugged, introduced, and driven to a big beautiful house in a small village
south of Chalakudy in central Kerala. I stayed there for the majority
of three weeks (save a two-day trip to Fort Cochin) with a family of
loving, funny, open people. I felt safe in India, as "foreign" as it all was, because Nitya, Fanny, the American Idol-style TV shows, and the giant billboards staring white women advertising kitchen faucets made it feel just a little bit like home.

But home, what's home to a traveling girl? In India, my home was Canada. In Canada, my home was my mom's place in Toronto, and now it's my apartment down the street. If home is a familiar place in which we feel centered, why shouldn't I explore my vast back yard and the subsequent forests and mountains and oceans that surround it? It's time for me to snoop out the property, check out the scenery, scope the landscape - and the best way to do that is by going on a cross-Canada adventure.

So I'm taking the train out west this June, and in the spirit of finding my "home" in Canada, I ain't staying at any hotels. Nope, I'm couch surfing baby, sleeping on the love-seat of a couple in Vancouver, a guest room bed in Victoria, an air mattress in Courtenay, and who knows where else. Have I mentioned yet that I've never been further west than Winnipeg? Yup, this'll be good.

Despite my openness to meeting new people and having a good experience, I have some particularly strong stances that will colour this trip, methinks the colour BLOOD. For one thing, I love Toronto. I heard everyone outside of Toronto hates Toronto and if I hear one note of pretentious annoyance in anyone's voice, by golly there will be hell to pay. I know one of the goals of the India trip was to "de-Toronto-ize" me, but how do I do that in a place where Toronto may as well be Moncton, New Brunswick? To a Canadian, and especially to a proud Torontonian, we are a varied bunch, not simpletons who can be lumped into one nice pile of Plain Jane's and Millimeter Peter's.

But I fear the Vancouverite. Vancouver ranks decidedly higher on the cool scale than Toronto and is a close second to Montreal. I can understand why Montreal is cool. They speak French there and that's different. They are the dark haired artistes of our country, and they drink and smoke with their attractive four-o'clock-shadowed mouths. Damn good looking Montrealers. But the Vancouverite! Close to nature their entire lives, good bud and killer waves. Yes, they must be so smug about having the ocean and the mountains and the barely-there winter (though I was told that it's rainy and gray from October to April and can be very miserable. Suckers!). Do they speak another language? "Chahh dude totally puff puff pass my surf board man I gotta shred some waves at Tofino or whatever..."

* * * * *

A lot has changed! I promise! I swear!

Heather and I joined Sound One in their spankin' new 12-seater tour van on their voyage to Montreal (on route to Ottawa), and boy was that sweet. Ho-downs, number games, drawing pictures, taking pictures, dancing our butts off at Cafe Campus, and so much poutine. It feels cliche to go to Quebec and eat nothing but poutine, but the truth is that we can't get poutine in Toronto -- actually, wait. No. We can get poutine in Toronto. We HAVE poutine. We're cosmopolitan like that. But poutine and Quebec are just interchangeable concepts.
"Hey, where you goin' this weekend?"
"Poutineland."
"Lucky! I've heard they've got great strippers."
"And I KNOW they've got great strippers. The cheese curds are phenomenal."
"And that gravy! Whatever you do though, don't go to La Belle Provance."
"Oh, yeah, I heard it's not so belle. They scoop lard into the deep-fryer grease, causing any nutrients that may have been stored in the potato-frites and gravy to separate."
"That was a stretch."
"I know, but a joke only goes so far."

And then it dies. So yesterday Michaela came by bus too, via Guelph by anarchist bus (don't ask me how they organized a bus trip amid all the chaos but they did it miraculously). We left the band, I said my good-byes to my super cute'n'hot boyfriend, and the three of us went a walkin', looking for "a bonfire on the mountain." We didn't find it, but we found a giant beautiful gazebo where some punks were drinking, as well as some very pleasant music makers by a statue further down the way. From there we tried to find le metro, the run-because-it-closes-at-1:00 AM metro. We didn't make it to Mont-Royal station in time but we found a nice fruit and vegetable stand right beside it, where we split on apple cider. I also bought some maple syrup butter because it sounds like what dreams are made of, like the clouds which make up the brick work of God's sweet pantry. Mmmm. Fluffy structurally-fundamental maple syrup butter.

We ended up taking a taxi here, to Jocelyn's, because it's far from the city and we were all getting pretty tired. If a taxi's backseat seat belts are ineffective, is it fair to pay the full fare, considering the driver drove on the highway and put HIS seat belt on? I ask you, sexy ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

We got in (which involved walking up those beautiful iron spiral staircases), hung out with our host who was in bed, then found a place to sleep. I chose to grab a couple yoga mats and sleep on the floor. With a sleeping bag and a pillow, it's just like camping! Except I'm inside and warm and there aren't as many bugs. I had a great sleep. I don't know what time I woke up this morning but I decided today was a good day to do some yoga. It was the first time in a long while since stretching wasn't a chore or something I HAD TO DO if I wanted to be healthy. After six hours in the van, the poutine, and three straight days of dancing my darndest, I needed to stretch, and it felt amazing.

Now I'm just chillin', still in my sleeping bag, semi-planning out the day with Michaela. When I say semi, I mean very minimally because I'm content to go along for the ride and do whatever. I'm also lamenting all the necessary stuff I didn't bring, the moisturizer, make-up remover, eye drops, allergy pills (there are a couple cats here), glasses, and pyjamas that I will remember for next time. This weekend trip is just the tip of the ice burg for traveling this summer, a sample of what's to come.

So won't you come along with me June 5th and join in the fun? *passes gas in great anticipation*