Montreal was more Mont-surreal! (I know, I am the cheesiest dorito in the packet)
Last weekend, I visited Montreal with fellow Brit Sarah Keith and it was honestly one of my favourite weekends in a very long time. Of course, if you tell anyone that you’ve spent the weekend in Montreal they would naturally be oohing and ahing by its stunning reputation, and ask us about all the cool young shit people my age would get up to. Like, did we hit Crescent and St Laurent Streets for its spectacular clubs and bars? No. Did we party the night and day away during Osheaga’s Indie festival celebrating 10 epic years of music and arts? Nope. Did we accidentally- on- purpose visit the renowned strip clubs? God NO! I think what made this little trip hilarious was the realisation of how new we still were to Canada, the spontaneity of things going wrong and dealing with situations out of our control, in which I learnt a fair bit about myself too.I do always think it’s the little, obscure, and perhaps irrelevant moments that shape our experiences and time with people.
Stepping foot into Montreal had made me realise how bad my French genuinely was - even studying the language throughout most of my high school years and then a year for A levels. Although, studying the subject at A level is more of a confession and I usually keep this piece of information under wraps. When Sarah and I arrived at the underground terminal, we felt a little nervous - we couldn’t confidently get ourselves to purchase the tickets for the tube just because we didn’t want to offend and cause a massive who-ha style disruption. Ideally we should have just tried, I mean collectively, we combine around 10+ years of french tuition. I’m sure we could have constructed a single, beautiful sentence. But, all my brain really wanted to say was ‘J’ecoute de la musique’ . How useful is it to say that I enjoy music? not even giving you the genre. So we just hovered around like lost puppies and I was then nominated to speak, undemocratically elected by Sarah. I planned to say ‘Can you speak English’ to ask the receptionist and by the time I reached the counter, I semi froze and said ‘Tu parles l’anglish’. Sarah laughed, the receptionist laughed and I laughed… in agony. The receptionist responded ‘ Yes I do, how may I help you’ in perfect accent, grammar and sentence structure. Lesson here is that when you’re in a foreign city, you either speak their native tongue or your native tongue. Do not combine the both with Frenglish.
lesson #2 always read your labels. Throughout the entire trip, I had thought I was moisturising my hands with hand sanitiser. Being out all day, after meals, staying at a hostel and using public toilets aren't always pleasant so fighting bacteria with hand sanitiser is always handy.. but oh no, I wasn’t fighting bacteria with hand sanitiser, I was actually multiplying the bacteria of my hands with this foreign liquid make up remover I had mistakenly bought. weirdly - make up remover had the same sensation of a wet, cold tingly feeling so it’s not really a mistake, this was just different. Pardoned.
#3 Zip Lining - is as always as epic as it sounds! Montreal is so forward with spontaneous activities around the city. We had briefly heard that there was a pop up zip lining company visiting for the summer but thought nothing of it, nor did we really plan to take the plunge. But, walking around Old Montreal we could see the lines from a distance. Naturally, Sarah was excited and well up for it because she is a bit of a mad bat when it comes to thrill seeking sport! Whereas I, well I used to be afraid of butterflies as a child but I wanted to do this to prove to myself I could, and I just knew I would feel amazing afterwards. Plus, the zip line wasn't across an amazon rainforest jungle and we were heavily protected too. After getting geared up, we were to climb our way up to the platform which was hundreds of feet high, and to sweetly calm my nerves, Sarah lovingly told me to ‘just look at all the wee children zip lining Rumina, you’ll be ok’ and she was right, these kids had what I missed having as a young soul, feeling invincible and without a single worry in the world. Zip lining was in fact pretty therapeutic, being unstable in mid air had never made me feel so stable, secure and carefree? But, just before the actual diving into mid air part- my feet somehow couldn’t physically lift off the ground… so Sarah was left zip lining by herself, and to this day I keep having flashbacks of her looking back at me with daggers whilst casually zip lining across Montreal. And then eventually - around 30 seconds later, I took the plunge!
For me, these brief, insignificant shenanigans articulates into life time memories.
