Montreal > all

During the last few days I've been spending a lot of time with a Canadian friend of mine who's now here in Finland. He's from Edmonton and he had this to say:

"Juha, would you please stop going on and on about Montreal already? Please?"

I promptly answered: "No."

I think he hates me now.

Home sweet home

Great. 80-90% of the grass in Joensuu is dead. Yellow and brown and dead. It looks like Pripyat here. Must have been the heat.

Well this sucks, just royally

I feel horrible for saying this but honestly, I don't want to leave.

Taina, mom, dad, sis, bro, friends... move to Montréal? Please? Pretty please? With sugar on top?

If anything, spending two months in Montréal has made me realize how there really just isn't anything happening in Joensuu. Going back there feels like switching back to eating regular oatmeal for breakfast after wolfing down Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs every morning for two months. I sure liked my Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. Wouldn't mind eating them again in the future.

I will try to make a some sort of recap of things I learned and/or enjoyed in Montréal once I get back to Finland and maybe recover from jetlag a bit.

Again, thank you so much, Chick, Carole, Jon, Mandy, Don, Pat, Lynda, Katrin, Dan, Andrew, Murray, Heather, Bradley, Ralph, Chris, Jen, Emma, Ann(e?), Dennis, Nora, Mel, Rona, The Weird Old Hippie Dude, and all the other colourful characters I met during my adventures and forgot to mention here (sorry!), you made me enjoy my stay here so much more! You rock.

La Ronde

I'm so happy I decided to go to La Ronde after all. Big thanks to Dan for encouraging me to go.

The Goliath is sick. It's sick I tell you. I swear the drops were just straight down vertical.

Fireworks were amazing up close. Couldn't stop laughing at the total overkill of exploding awesomeness.

Also visited Angrignon park and the city library.

Dunno what's gonna happen tomorrow. About two trillion overlapping/conflicting plans. Well two anyway.

Two and a half days left

Quick update.

Wednesday: spent 5h in the Museum of Fine Arts. Miles Davis exhibition rocked. Saw works by Picasso and Cezanne and all those guys. The rest of the day in Old Montreal + Old Port.

Thursday: Went to Oka for some biking (and swimming!) with Don and Pat. Pretty amazing beach they got there, too bad there was very little water. At the 1.6 metre sign I had water to my knees. Later in the evening went to the Morgan Arboretum with Chick. Saw Saturn and its rings through a telescope, spent an hour staring the sky for some Perseids, saw maybe 15 and a fireball too. 200+ people in there, folks cheering and clapping after each shooting star, was nice.

Friday: Spent the day in parks mainly, visited the Biosphere in Jean Drapeau too. Highlight of the day: munching on my grilled cheese sandwich at Orange Julep while Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence was playing on the radio. Being right next to the Decarie Expressway, I had to take the title ironically.

Tomorrow: one last park, then maybe an amusement park and fireworks.

Also, picture of the day:



Blurry but awesome.

Oh man, what a day... again

A day full of wonder and blunder.

I woke up at 10 (yeah I know, I know... sue me), did my usual morning routine of reading/replying to (university) email, going through the news followed by some googling. I've learned that google maps is a really neat service. Never had much use for it in Joensuu (:D), but here it's just pure gold. I always check my targets for the day on google maps to help me navigate later on.

Anyhow, done with my preparation I ran to the bus stop, only to realize I had checked the wrong bus schedule and missed my bus by some 5mins or so. First mistake of the day. So I decided to walk back home to wait for the next one there, but on the way back I met Chick talking to his neighbour Dave, who was just about to go take care of some business so he decided to give me a lift to Fairview. Thanks, Dave!

So I eventually I get to Cote-Vertu and go grab a late breakfast or lunch (late brunch I guess!) at the Decarie Hot-dogs (or whatever it was, the sign was almost completely faded). The joint, which both Chick and Jon apparently used to frequent back in the day, was well worth the visit. I ate what must have been the greasiest pile of fries ever. Me and my arteries loved every second of it.

I walk back to Cote-Vertu, take the metro to Bonaventure. I have this silly way of sometimes not getting off at the nearest metro station to where I want to go; I kinda wanna visit as many stations as possible, simply because they're all different and some of them are really nice looking inside with all kinds of colourful artwork and stuff.

It took a bit of wandering around but after a while I found St Patrick's Basilica and hopped right in. From outside the church didn't look like much but inside it was just gorgeous. Beautiful arched ceiling, marble pillars, stained glass windows, you name it they had it. I had spent maybe 15 minutes tops there when a guy walked up to me and whispered 'excuse me, we're kinda closed' so out I go again.

Outside I was met with an old bum, who was adamant on helping me out with whatever it was that I needed help with, which was rather difficult as I didn't really need help with anything. He was very persistent though, kept talking and talking and talking about Montreal and how much he loves the city and all that business, most likely hoping to get a buck or two from me. Probably much to his dissapointment I turned out to be a perpetually broke student with little change to spare, but he didn't let it show. He was a really nice dude, or at least pretended to be one, and if the case really was the latter, he succesfully fooled me.

Anyway, I eventually found myself at Place des Festivals, where I just sat for some 30-45mins watching skaters pull off some crazy tricks and kids play with the streams of water blasting out of the ground, stealthily taking pics every now and then in hopes of not being thought to be a pedophile. It was already past six o'clock when I got another one of my stupidly brilliant ideas - walk up to the lookout on Mont-Royal.

The temperature was only some 25-26 degreees but the humidity was killing me. It was killing me even more when I walked up St Catherine and Peel and finally up the mountain along the stairs. Not something I'd recommend you do in jeans and with a heavyish backpack with you. Well, I did and I was dripping sweat and my jeans were glued to my legs. Luckily at the top there is a chalet with bathrooms and water fountains for drinking etc so I could at least wash the sweat off my face and drink some more water as the bottle I took with me had already vanished ages ago.

It was like 19:30 when I went to the lookout and just sat there taking pics and waiting for the sun to go down in order to witness the gradual transformation of the scene from light to dark with the city slowly lighting up in the background. It took almost 90 minutes but it was totally worth it. Seeing the city down below you all lit up at night - just wow.

My next stop was getting some bagels from St Viateur or Fairmount and on my map I had noted a road on the north side of the mountain heading that way, but as I got there I found out there was no sidewalk. I figured I'd just drive all the drivers nuts if I went there, so I backtracked to the outlook, went for the bad idea number two, and decided to walk down the stairs back to Peel. Now, it must have been the first time I felt a bit nervous here in Montreal and it wasn't because I afraid of some crazed junkie pouncing on me from the bushes but because it was literally pitch-black. You could see a couple of feet in front of you, and even that just barely. Not exactly the ideal situation for climbing down some 500 steps zig-zagging down in a rather steep angle.

It took me longer than I thought so I just thought I'd ditch the bagel trip and walked down Peel to Rene Levesque instead. As some folks know, I just love cities at night and what better place in Montreal to admire the lit up skyscraper awesomeness in downtown than Rene Levesque. So I walked all the way up to Atwater and then down Atwater to Lionel-Groulx. There I quickly visited Tim Hortons for a coffee and some donuts (See, Carole? The reason I don't eat much in the Wasteland is because I keep nourishing myself with the fine, healthy culinary marvels Montreal is famous for). So I grabbed the stuff, went out and "Oh, look! There's the 211, I think I can make it!"

I just made it in but as I was one of the last people to enter the bus, all the seats were taken and I had to stand. The bus set off for the Wasteland, I grabbed ahold of one of the poles or whatever and I'm just standing there, happily sipping my coffee for about 10 minutes before... well, remember when I said the they keep the windows open in buses here? You do? Really? Wow, now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside! Anyway, again the windows were open and the bus was speeding along the highway, so of course after a while the draft decided it was time to get rid of Juha's amazing Flextronics cap.

At this point my superb reflexes kick in and I try to grab the cap with my free hand before I flies off altogether. Too bad my superb reflexes didn't notice the superb Tim Hortons coffee I was holding in this 'free' hand of mine. The coffee superbly soars into the air and I get it all over my hair, back of my neck, right shoulder and my backpack. Like I said, the bus was full, but not full enough so I was pretty much the only one standing while everyone else was sitting and fully able to enjoy the spectacle of me making an ass of myself.

So I start to smile, embarrassed, go all 'heh, I'm such an idiot', turn around and try to see where my cap flew. At first I can't seem to find it anywhere, further deepening my embarrassment. Then a nice lady behind me starts to point at something so I follow the trajectory and find my cap neatly parked on the shoulder of this youngish, twentysomething asian dude sitting on the seat next to me. "Ah, there it is, thanks," I say, grab the hat and... bang! A massive, brightly coloured 'ooohhhh crap...' explodes inside my head.

As I lifted the cap I realized that not only did I splash coffee on myself, but I also managed to pour it all over this guy's shoulder. His striped, blue shirt had a nice pattern of brown randomness all over it. By this time I truly wanted to go into ostrich-mode and stick my head in the sand to get away from all this embarrassment. The asian guy must have been a Zen Master or something, because he never bat an eye, just kept reading his book, acting(?) as if nothing had happened. I launch into a burst of apologies, so so sorries, totally my bads, all the while trying to find a kleenex or something to give him, but no, can't find one. The nice lady behind me tries to find one, but she doesn't have one either. The guy just sits there, reading. The poor guy must have been too shy to get mad at me or something. I'm fairly certain he whispered something during my little barrage of apologies. It could have been "It's OK", but I couldn't really hear him through the howl of the wind blasting in through the windows.

The only positive thing about the whole ordeal I could think of was that luckily the coffee wasn't hot any more.

Also, if you read all this you have no life.

Beat

Left at 1pm, came back at 9pm. That's 8 hours of biking. Dollard des Ormeaux, Sainte Anne de Bellevue, Baie d'Urfe, Beaconsfield. Walked around quite a bit too, especially in Sainte Anne de Bellevue.

Tomorrow to Quebec City.

Suhhweeeet!

Awesome day! Went downtown, got off at Lucien L'allier. Checked out the hockey plaques outside Bell Center, then walked to Mary Queen of the World. Mass going on in the basilica or something so I didn't wanna disturb them. Wandered around for 5-10mins, took a few pics and got out.

Got asked for directions twice by French speaking tourists(?). Who do they think I am, a Montrealer? Can't even speak their language! The other one I was able to help, she asked for the whereabouts of Rene Levesque which was easy enough - 'walk 10 metres that way' - she was basically walking on the street. The other group wanted to find a restaurant the location of which I didn't know. No surprises there. All of them were really nice though, polite, smiling 24/7.

Anyhoo, getting sidetracked here, too much time spent with Chick I guess. Walked to the Center for Architecture next and it was brilliant. I didn't understand any of it, a lot of maths, weirdo sketches and diagrams, but it rocked anyway. I mean just look at these things:



I'm pretty sure you weren't supposed to take pics in there, but I realized it after I had taken these. Yeah, I'm slow. The last one is defo my favourite. I have no idea what it's supposed to be but man does it look cool. When I was a kid I wanted to become not a police officer or a fireman, but an architect. Then I realized you needed maths and that was it. Suffice to say, my maths skills aren't exactly legendary.

Then I walked outside where they had a little park with strange statues. Since it was warm and beautiful outside, I decided to walk around some more until it started to rain. Dunno where the clouds came from, but I hurried to Guy-Concordia and took the subway to Lionel Groulx. Hopped onto the 211 just as it really started to pour. Sat in the bus with some random people, rain coming in through the windows. Yeah, folks always open the windows in buses. Beautiful sunset, sun still shining while the rain poured down on the bus. Could see a rainbow arching across the sky through the window, started to grin like an idiot. A huge 747 flew right above the bus. Awesomeness. Couldn't stop smiling. Rain stopped. Still beautiful sunset. Still smiling. One of those evenings when I just truly felt genuinely happy. I love it when it happens, love this little town.

Then later on in Kirkland I was supposed to go to watch a softball game with Chick. Quickly grabbed a jacket and we drove to the park. Thunderstorm right above us, rain, constant flashes of lightning, game cancelled. We drove back to the house, then lightning strikes, all the lights go out. Drove up to St Charles, nope, no power. Pitch black on Brunswick, only lights you saw were the tiny solar powered lights people use as decoration. It was eerie. Loved it.

W: insects to stop biting chunks off of my skin kthx

ALERT, ALERT: This blog entry features pictures taken by Chick so if you see something that looks good it's probably his.

So today Chick and Carole took me here:



That'd be Mont-Tremblant, the local equivalent to Koli. However, this little bump was some 875m instead of Koli's 400m or so, making it apparently the highest point in the province of Quebec. Or maybe just the ski resort with the biggest vertical drop, I dunno, confused and tired.

Anyhoo, this is what it looked like to drive there. It was a 125km (ish) drive and most of it was like this.



Those things in the background are called Laurentian mountains methinks. Problem: clouds were so low you couldn't see much of the mountains.



We arrived at Mont-Tremblant. Yeah, you really couldn't see anything. Visibility at the top was zero.



But this is how it looked like down there at the bottom.



Think they were going for an Alpine theme?



Not a town without a Marriott hotel I guess.



With swimming pools.



And minigolf.



Anvils, being really heavy and stuff, aren't generally believed to make for accepteble weathercocks, but this dude seemed to disagree.



Despite the fog and the clouds it was rather colourful there. This was the main street, pretty sure it was named Kandahar for whatever weird reason. Can't think of much Afghanistan and a skiresort in Quebec would have in common, but hey don't let that stop you.



Nice houses, eh?



Weirdo waterfall rapids thingy. Notice clear(-r +n) water.



Yeah still couldn't see anything. There was a lake at the bottom.



Went to grab a bite. This restaurant rocked.



Their menu didn't. Find at least two typos/mistakes and I'll give you a cookie.



Ooh weather's changing, awesomeness! Let's drive back.



Took the James Bond elevator up to the top.



Passed some folks trying to climb up. I guess they couldn't afford the lift.



Whoever photoshopped that charismatic stallion in there did a really poor job.



I don't remember why I chose to upload this particular photo. Think of something, I'm sure you can do it, just use your imagination.



Oh looky, it's teh town below.



View from the top. Notice the shadows the clouds are creating. Or don't.



That dude climbed all the way up to the summit. According to tourist information, it takes 2 hours to hike up there. This guy said he did it in 50 minutes. Liar liar pants on fire, but still thumbs up for making it up to the top without a Monty Python style heart attack.



View to the north I think.



They had like nine lifts at Mont-Tremblant. Also, seems like every single little hill you see in any of the pictures posted here has a ski resort. I stopped counting them after the 7th or so.



Oh yeah apparently there was a really beautiful lake there called Lac Superior, obviously named after how I always feel. Didn't see the lake though as I was too busy sleeping. You know how it is with me and cars and trains, sleepy time for little Juha.

Sigh...

I seem to excel at getting bad service. I just came back from La Belle Province and this is all the two guys there said:

Guy 1: You ready?
Guy 1: K.
Guy 2: Five bucks.

No smiles, no pleases, no thankyous, nothing, while I of course tried to be as polite and likeable as possible. Both of them just looked at me as if I'd recently killed their dogs and grandmothers and girlfriends with maybe some parent murdering thrown in too for good measure. The two people (a guy and a girl) who came after me got really good service, lots of chatter, smiling, laughing, everyone just screaming happy happy happy, so it's just gotta be my face or something. John Goodman couldn't have said it better.

Two weeks

In exactly two weeks I'll be sitting on the plane going back to Finland. Well technically speaking I hope I'll be sitting in the plane, but I guess I gotta stick to the old English convention of using prepositions as illogically as possible. Anyway, I can't belive I only have less than 14 days left.

I've been really active as of late, and therefore my nerd credibility is on the decline, something which Jon never forgets to remind me of. First I was in Hudson with Murray, Heather and Bradley, getting bombarded with all kinds of outdoors activity for two days. Then I tried to regain some of my nerd credibility by spending the Saturday playing boardgames with Dan, Andrew and Jon, but unfortunately my efforts were in vain as the next day I was out again with Murray, Heather, Bradley, Don and Pat, biking along the Lachine canal to the old port and doing all kinds of non-geeky stuff that people who aren't nerds tend to do. Like eating ice cream.

And today I went biking with Don and Pat again. Oh boy, I need to do some heavy geekage back in Finland to reclaim my former glory. Note to self: start by using expressions like oh boy. Anyway, we picked up some bagels from a place in Marche de l'ouest or something similar(ish), drove up to Parc Cap-Saint-Jacques or whatever in Pierrefond or something or another. Please, never make me spell French stuff, please I beg you.

There we ate some bagels with way too much cream cheese, just like you are supposed to, gulped down some ice tea and I even had my very first granola bar! Or so I thought anyway. I was really excited, yay, another one of these famous things I had only heard about but never tried myself, and then it basically turns out to be a muesli bar! Why use such a fancy name for a muesli bar you weird North-Americans you. My initial dissapointment of it being a glorified muesli bar quickly faded away as I tasted it though, mainly because it tasted like someone had crashed a sugar truck into it.

Then we biked around the park for a couple of hours. We happened upon an organic farm in the park, stopping there for a good half an hour or so. It was a neat little place with all kinds of scary animals, cows, goats, chickens, bees, horses, spiders, geese, ostriches and this:



I mean isn't that just adorable? The cat was just chillin' in (or on?!) the wheelbarrow.

Eventually we found a beach where I proceeded to swim and Don and Pat proceeded to freeze their asses off, Don in particular. I had to try and coax him into dipping himself in the water for like 30 minutes. Honestly, I don't get it! The water was almost as warm as the place I'll be going to for writing all the blasphemous stuff I have. I could have spent years in the water, that's how warm it was. Added bonus: now when they ask us about the Mighty Ottawa River in the Friday night quiz we always go to, I can say 'oh yeah, that's right, that's the river I've swum in' and feel superior.

Anyway, bike back to car, drive back to Don and Pat's place, drive to Costco, look like :O when entering Costco, spend way too much money at Costco, laugh at the absurdity of Costco, spend more money at Costco, exit Costco, drive back to Marche de l'ouest or OK close enough, go to Dunn's for some smoked meat goodness, bike back home along the hydro servitude before the storm gets here and the rai---oh crap too late, here comes the rain, oh the lightning too, oh &%!£ I think that lightning just struck right th---oh %$"! again, and again, oh crap, faster, ride faster &%/€@$!", yikes, not again, wow that was close, holy cow I'm soaked and wet and CRACK uh that was wayyy too close CRACKLEIdon'twannadiepleaseletmejustBOOOOOMgethomesafelypleasepleasepleaseBOOMBOOMohgod, ohgod, ohgod, I don't care how unlikely it is to be struck by lightning CRACKLE wowneverseenquadruplelightningbeforeBOOMohOKI'drathernotseeitagainplease, CRACKLE, almost home, almost home, BOOOM CRACKLE CRACKLE my shoes are like swimming pools BOOOOM soooo close, soooooooooo close CRACKLE, there it is, whew I can't believe I made it!

So I'm standing there in front of the garage door, panting, soaking wet, almost having peed my pants in sheer terror when Chick, with a smug glee on his face, comes out the front door and starts to snap pictures of me with his camera, laughing at my miserable existence like the good friend that he is. Thanks, Chick, appreciated!

Eventually he goes to get me a towel (grudgingly of course!) and after drying myself and pouring the water out of my wallet, camera and sunscreen can, among other things, I grab a can of Dr Pepper and we talk about all kinds of stuff until midnight. Well, 'we' meaning mostly just 'Chick'. I know Jon finds this just utterly perplexing, but for some reason I really enjoy these little 5-hour chats.

Maybe later

I logged on, full of excitement, bursting at the seams with energy, just itching to pen a massive blog entry dishing out even the tiniest of details about my past few days, naturally accompanied by a plethora of tremendously beautiful pictures of course.

Then I realized I was simply just totally beat and decided to go to bed instead. Yes, I wrote all this just to let you know that I was too exhausted to conjure up a blog entry.

However, so that your precious time wisely spent reading my blog wouldn't have gone entirely to waste, here is an image for your entertainment: