LL-L "Travels" 2012.08.24 (01) [EN]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L - 24 August 2012 - Volume 01
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From: Roger Thijs rogerthijs at yahoo.com
 Subject: LL-L Travels

I have been staying in Montreal this week (I’m returning to-morrow evening)
and I think it was an interesting travel experience.
As for the language, it took me some time to adjust to the pronunciation.
At the conference I attended, I met some people from Québec city, and I
mainly had to adjust to the pronunciation of their vowels: often unrounded
and with a strongly reduced nasalization, followed by a residual “n”.
I must admit I did could not follow common talk by people in the tube.
Actually the local French has quite some varieties,
- the regional French
  http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Français_québécois
- Joual spoken in the popular areas of  Montreal
  http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joual
- Magoua the dialect spoken North of the town:
   http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magoua
I bought a couple of  little language booklets, but they are worthless:
they just give some local vocabulary and expressions. It has no sense to
lean these cute exoticisms. The key is rather forcing one’s ear to follow
the varieties in pronunciation.
I thought Montreal was bilingual English French. One hears quite a lot of
English in the business hotels. One hardly sees some indications in English
in the street. The only exception is Chinatown where things are trilingual:
Chinese-French-English. Tourist busses on Sunday were all from Toronto (The
border of NY State is only a few miles to the South but I didn’t see
tourist busses of that area)
The typical food is “poutine”, what I would call in Dutch “frieten met
stoofvleessaus”, or French fries with stew sauce. The fries are cut in the
shape of thick fries but taste like baked potatoes, the sauce is sweet
(clearly a mix of meat sauce with ketchup, and a bit of cheese).
Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poutine
It took me some time for finding my way. The central railway station was
close by as to my street maps, but I didn’t find it at first. It actually
is two levels down with the elevator below the lobby of our hotel (the
Fairmont) and it looks rather like a shopping center. The platforms are one
more level down, but since people are only allowed to the platforms shortly
before departure, waiting queues are seen regularly in the shopping area on
top at the entrance of the proper platform stairs.
Long distance trains are managed by VIA Canada. In the evening there is
also one departure by Amtrak to New York City. In this station there is
also a regular commuter train to Deux-Montagnes, but for other commuter
trains one has to be at a other nearby rail station “Lucien-L’Allier”, just
one metro station away.
That sounds easy, but it is not that easy. The metro station connected to
the railway station is called Bonaventure, but for reaching it one has to
find one’s way in a poorly marked underground street labyrinth, with quite
some turns, doors, two high roller stairs further down and some more
classical stairs…
Price of a metro ticket is 8 CDN for a full day. I took it for the shopping
center Angrignon at the end of the green line. Cf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrefour_Angrignon
One evening I took the orange line to the “Mont Royal” plateau. It is a
kind of cozy quartier with many young people in the streets and a big
diversity of eateries.
The underground labyrinth has – as to my tourist guide book – a total
length of 30 km. Since it is really a labyrinth and many gangways lead to a
dead end, one gets easily lost. In the summer most little underground shops
close at 6pm. Summer live rather happens above ground.
I had a nice walk on Sunday into China town, and returned through old
Montreal, down at the river side. The latter looks like a provincial French
town. Since long queues were waiting outside for a seat at the tourist
restaurants, I skipped those. The town is actually on the slope of a hill,
and it took me some time to find my hotel uphill. I found some good and
affordable restaurants in the “Ville Marie” area, close to the shopping
street “rue Sainte-Cathérine”.
Since I was (and still am to-morrow) at a conference, I unfortunately did
not have the time for discovering the town any further.
Roger,
from my room on the 14th floor with sight on the roof of the cathedral.

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