chou

bonjour mon amis, j'adore montreal...BUT je ne comprends pas ANYONE!
weather report: blaring blue skies, moderate air, the air that has no feeling against ones skin as it is the same temperature as you or I.

big things in montreal: bagels, poutine, wine, sex, cheese, cigarettes, music, butter.

day one:
we table scored cigars at a cafe and ordered coffee, and sat about for a few hours planning where we were going to stay. i phoned a couchsurfer, phil, and got through. he lives on Mont Royal and rue Parthenais. Took the bus, which if you have charisma, are free, to his place. later too the Metro to McGill University. This place is ancient.

The metro is really fast, and runs on actual car wheels rather than on rails. Its really loud, dirty, and windy while you wait sometimes hundreds of feet underground. Every so often you hear reverberated aliens screaming over the loudspeaker that bounces off the walls and carries down the tubes.

day 2

walked to the olympic stadium to see montreals glorious feats that were obtained through thirty plus years of debt. walked around inside the biosphere and the giant mouth with an elevator that goes up it to an observation deck. This place was void of any humans in what seems like thirty years. Vast pastures of cement and a few grazing skateboarders were the only things outside. Inside however was even stranger. Tonnes of neon lights going in all four directions overheard large enough walkways to accomodate thousands of people, but besides us, there were only two others in the building, two people in wheelchairs, seemingly lost, or forgotten, scooting around the foyer.
We left this place and went to the jardin botanique de montreal and the insectarium de montreal.
kept walking and ended up in a china town buffet. the place was huge and full of people gulping their mounds of food. the food ranged from sushi-jello-cake-chicken feet-pizza.
walked down st. catherines and found an abandoned block of buildings. we climbed the stairs to the roof and got a great view of the city 6 stories up. we hopped from one rooftop to the next seeing how the old blended in with the new.

day 3

we hiked mont royal. Its funny they call it a mountain, its really no larger than fraser street. But its a really nice park and was used as an ancient burial ground for the first nations before any settlers arrived. Half of the mountain is converted into a cemetary for the french. On top of the mountain is a huge cross with disco lights on it that lights up at night for the whole city to see. I even think it flashes. Went into the cemetary, the largest I've ever seen. Huge tombs and really old graves are scattered throughout the north side of the mountain some ranging from 1808-1810.
dave and i made borsht for the house. the house is really nice and old. there is a spiral staircase that leads to the front door off the street. 5 people share it, and pay $375 a month, everything included. phil said you can find rent for even cheaper in the city. fucking nuts!
scattered throughout the city is a bike station called bixi. You just swipe your credit card and for $5 a day 24hrs you get access to a bike. there are 300 stations throughout the city wherer you can drop the bike off. and for a half an hour its free! we rented bixis and went to a lame show at a space called lambi, then headed to a bar called barfly where 1940s blue grass was playing.

next day.
we were going to rent bixis when we found at the mont royal metro station a vast number of bikes painted green next to a tourist centre. we found out these bikes are completley free to rent! as long as you return them by 6pm. so we borrowed these and biked to beerfest at Bonaventure. Alot of free cheese, but the beer was expensive. There are alot of bike lanes here, two way bike lanes! Picked up some rolls of film that I hope to get scanned then added to this blog so you can see some of what I am describing. Ate mini burgers and poutine.
Had a few conversations where I just nodded while the other person spoke extremely fast in french, me laughing at the right points and saying au revoir at the end.
rode to this amazing park where people were playing all sorts of instruments while the sun set. we drank mead until it was dark. there doesn't seem to be any drinking laws here as everyone was drinking at the park, openly.
back to the house we had a conversation about how the city was made by freemasons. This guy who believed this studied symbology and could walk around the city studying old, really old statues that pointed in certain directs and how things lined up with one another and so on.
walked a really really dumb polish film called everything for sale. actually we had to turn it off.
turn this off.