A Mellow, Meaty Conclusion

Prologue: This post covers events that are over three years old. As usual…sorry. 

My previous post detailed the frustration I felt trying to do almost anything in Buenos Aires. As I waited to board my overnight bus to Uruguay, I thought I had finally left that behind. While boarding the bus, the driver checked my passport and told me I needed a stamp. I wasn’t sure what kind of stamp he meant, nor where to get it – I’d expected to deal with that at the Uruguayan border. But it was clear I wasn’t getting to the border until I had the stamp he was looking for.

So it was that my final moments in Buenos Aires found me at a full sprint, running back through security and the length of the bus terminal to a second floor of which I was previously unaware to get a stamp I didn’t know I needed from a ticket agent I didn’t know could give it. It was a fittingly frustrating, bewildering and stressful finish to a challenging portion of the trip. Buenos Aires had frustrated me one last time. Heart still pumping from the stress and the unexpected workout, I collapsed into my seat on the bus and prepared to wake up in Uruguay.  

My interest in Uruguay had grown gradually over the years, stirred at random intervals by various news items. There were occasional stories about President José Mujica, who donated a large portion of his salary to charity, continued to drive his 1987 Volkswagen Beetle throughout his presidency (2010-2015), and – my favourite part – condemned the necktie as a “useless rag.” Truly, a man after my own heart.

Uruguay also made the news for their progress on renewable energy, LGBTQ rights and their legalization of marijuana. I think I’ve always felt a fondness for small countries that pursue unique and progressive agendas (e.g. New Zealand, Iceland). I wouldn’t have flown across the equator just to see such a place, but once in the area, I wanted to make it happen.

As it has now been more than a toddler’s age since this trip actually happened – seriously, my youngest nephew was born after this trip and is now walking* – I will offer only my strongest memories of my time in Uruguay. There are a few:

Mellow Montevideo

In five days in Montevideo, I developed a bit of a fondness for it. After the sensory overload of Buenos Aires, Montevideo’s slower rhythms were a welcome change. The streets were lively and interesting, but no vendors tried to force their products on me. Indeed, unlike cities in both Chile and Argentina, Montevideo has organized an artisan market with regulated pricing and paid staff. It didn’t have the thrill of haggling with an artist on the street, but it was less stressful for all concerned and (I think) helps ensure fairer prices. The general feeling was very relaxed throughout my time in Uruguay, which was just what the doctor ordered in my case. 

You Can Take the Traveller Out of Urban Planning School…

…but you can’t keep me from noticing cool urban planning-related stuff when I travel. Here are three quick points:

- La Rambla, a 20-kilometre seawall and promenade along the Río de le Plata in Montevideo

La Rambla - note off-season weather

- Public art throughout Montevideo, and brightly-coloured building façades (if you choose to paint your house in a colour this bright, you have my support)

"How are we supposed to tell our houses apart?" "Oh wait, I know!"

Yes, that's Uruguayan football legend Luis Suarez. Yes, he has gigantic teeth.

- Punta Carretas, a former prison that has been converted into a shopping mall. I tend to avoid shopping malls, but this one was worth seeing as an incredible example of adaptive reuse.

The old prison gate now guards a shopping mall.

"¡El mejor carne de Uruguay!"

I spent my final two days in Uruguay in the town of Colonia del Sacramento, which is a quick ferry ride from Buenos Aires. Colonia is a relatively small, sleepy place, best known for its old quarter, which dates to the 17^th century. In the final days of my trip, it was a pleasant place to enjoy views of the water and wander the cobblestone streets. 

I did say it was a sleepy place.

In my wanderings in Colonia, I poked my head into a little restaurant that I liked the look of. It reminded me of a hunting lodge, or my great uncle Ted’s cabin in Muskoka: an open fireplace with a rifle hanging above, a wood pile for the evening's cooking and hunks of meat on prominent display. To paraphrase the 52^nd-best movie quote of all time, this place “had me at hello.”**

It was early by Uruguayan standards, so the place was empty, but the middle-aged woman behind the bar showed me a menu and I made my selection after trying to figure out which one was the steak (they all were). I took some photos with the proprietor’s permission.

When my order went in, a short middle-aged man with an impressive moustache (if memory serves) came out and began cooking. He looked as if my order had interrupted him in the process of chopping wood for that evening’s dinner rush and frankly, it might have. I surmised that he was married to the woman behind the bar, and that they ran the place themselves. Upon reaching the fireplace, he grabbed one of the gigantic hunks of dead cow, slapped it down on the cutting board and sliced off my dinner.

As I’d found throughout the trip, side dishes are deemed unnecessary next to steak, so when my meal came out it was as simple as you can imagine: a piece of meat grilled over a flame, presented on a wooden plate. As the chef placed it in front of me, he said, with great gusto, “¡El mejor carne de Uruguay!” (The best meat in Uruguay!)

The aforementioned best meat in Uruguay. Note: I ordered the fries separately, but I should not have.

He may have been right. I don’t know, I don’t usually eat beef. The memory of that steak’s taste has long faded. But the memory of that place, and that chef, has not.

The place started to fill up as I ate, and the chef – whose name I learned to be Mario – was busy on the grill. He seemed to know most of the customers, who just called their orders out as they sat down. One table of regulars realized how busy their host was and simply helped themselves from the (non-alcoholic) drinks fridge, telling Mario what they took. He or his wife noted them down and kept up a steady stream of banter from behind the bar. They took turns rearranging tables for new arrivals, saying hellos, and shaking hands. The two of them covered the roles of maître d’, server, cashier, chef, and presumably countless more that I didn’t see (dishwasher, for example).  

I could have watched this social ballet continue for hours, but I didn’t want to deprive others of it either. I left, and my table was quickly taken over by new arrivals. I returned to my hostel and relaxed with a book in one of the chairs near the main entrance, vaguely wishing I had waited until later to eat. In fact, the hostel staff were just phoning in their own dinner order as I returned. When it arrived 30 minutes later, it was none other than Mario himself – add “delivery boy” to his job title -  who had arrived on foot to deliver two freshly sliced and grilled servings of “¡El mejor carne de Uruguay!”

I don’t know why this anecdote sticks with me, and I won’t use space here to brainstorm an explanation. I’ll just say that Mario and his wife ran the kind of place I hope to find everywhere I go, whatever the purpose of my trip.

Playa de los Pocitos, Montevideo

Done!

It has taken me three years to write about a trip that took five weeks, but I did it! There is no more to write about my time in South America (I’ll spare you the story of the stomach bug I got on the way home, for which I DO NOT BLAME Mario). Watch this space for an update on the future of this blog…when I get around to it.

*When this trip happened, Barack Obama was President of the United States. Ouch.

**52^nd-best according to the American Film Institute, as listed here.

La Recalleta

Buenos Aires is probably one of the most widely-known South American cities, along with Rio de Janeiro. Although we encountered tourists throughout our trip, Buenos Aires was certainly the biggest tourist draw of all the places we visited. In fact, it was the biggest everything draw we visited.

I tend to think of myself as a pretty resilient person, particularly as a traveller. I’ve taken a long walk home at night through Paris, shared a two-bedroom apartment with 10 people for a few nights, rearranged itineraries due to missed connections, and hitchhiked on a deadline. I’m pretty adaptable. But it has been shown, on occasion, that cities challenge me. I grew up in a city (of 30,000 people). My parents live in a city (of 55,000 people). Sometimes they drive 90 minutes to go shopping in an even bigger city (of 160,000 people). And once in a while, they need to run down to a still bigger city (of 2 million people). But as my planning degree taught me, cities are now getting so big that they require new words to represent their size. Buenos Aires is a case in point (13 million people).

If I were to invent a new word to describe Buenos Aires, there's a chance it would be unpublishable. Looking back on it almost two years later, my strongest memory of Buenos Aires is of feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. The sheer quantity of people and buildings made for a constant barrage of external stimuli that drained both of us – though especially me, I think – of our fascination with our new surroundings. I can recall several times waiting for the city’s very affordable metro to arrive and hearing my travel companion say, “Nope. Not getting on that one,” when he saw how crowded it was.

Often crowded, always well-decorated.

Compounding this problem was the fact that no matter how well we thought we had prepared an outing, it inevitably proved to have more monkey wrenches in its works than we had realized. We would find museums with lines long enough to fill the place until well after it closed, bus routes with up to eight mapped variations that were not indicated on the vehicle as it arrived, and truly otherworldly traffic.

A picture is worth a thousand honks.

Perhaps the most representative example of our frustration was our visit to Le Recoleta cemetery, the final resting place of Evita Perón. Until arriving in Buenos Aires, Evita had been buried in the dusty attic of my memories of Latin American history courses (she may also be buried in your memories of the film Evita). I had learned about the cult of personality around her, but not fully appreciated it until I saw her likeness popping up around every corner in the Argentinian capital. Although she died over sixty years ago, she seems to be about as culturally present as Pope Francis – the first non-European Pope and a native of Buenos Aires.

So we made our way to La Recoleta and began looking for Evita. Bear in mind, North American readers, that this cemetery was not built like most of ours. Instead of simple headstones, most sites were filled to their proscribed limits with a single rectangular stone mausoleum, up to about ten feet (three metres or so) in height. The half-hearted maps and signage did not fully eliminate the challenges of navigating the narrow alleyways between these memorials. When we knew we were close to Evita’s site – a reasonably well-marked one, we assumed – we kept having to ask for directions. Someone would tell us it was two alleyways over. Another would tell us it was three more. Then another would tell us it was back two.

How often do you take a panorama of a cemetery?

I still have no idea where the memorial is because we never found it. Whenever we thought we had arrived, we hadn’t. By the time we found the next person to ask for directions, we were so far from where we’d been that we were basically starting from square one. Maybe she’s not even buried in La Recoleta, and they just say that to draw tourists. Maybe she moved when she found out we were looking for her (unlikely). Whatever the case, we were within throwing distance of perhaps the most famous resident of La Recoleta (a location that trades on her presence), a woman whose face still lights up the widest avenue in the world every night, and we never found her.

Evita still watches over Avenida 9 de Julio.

I realize, of course, that much of our frustration can be chalked up to our unfamiliarity with the culture. Although my Spanish had revived significantly by this point in the trip, it did not help us overcome local nuances in conversation. According to one source – a dual British-Argentinian citizen at our hostel – residents of Buenos Aires are noted for their habit of not answering questions directly. Instead, they might simply state a related, but not directly helpful fact. This claim might be spurious, as I have not been able to verify (or deny) it since, but it did help ease my fears that I was simply a bad Spanish speaker.*

However, I do not wish to sound as though I disliked Buenos Aires. It was a challenging place to adapt to as an outsider, but I realize that the challenge probably works the other way as well. In a philosophical sense, the monkey wrenches we found in our plans may have simply added to the mystique of the place; perhaps Buenos Aires is not meant for clinical execution of goals, but for serendipitous discoveries (we had a few of those too). As ever, it’s a question of perspective. Here are a few highlights:

- El Ateneo Grand Splendid, a former opera house that has been converted into a bookstore with a café built on the former stage.

- Patagonia Sur, a restaurant started by celebrity chef Francis Mallman. I was lucky enough to be treated to dinner here by someone who cares about me very much (and who was thousands of miles away). 

- La Reserva Ecológica Costanera Sur, a coastal nature reserve that was our respite from the city.

- El Museo del Humor, a window into Argentinian humor that we discovered coincidentally and that introduced me to Mafalda.

One of my favourites from el Museo del Humor.

Still, after a week of Buenos Aires, a dose of bed bugs (accompanied by a side of denial from our hosts) and a farewell to my travel companion, I was eager to continue on to Uruguay. Hopefully you are too.  

*I’d associate this nuance in porteño communication with others like the Canadian habit of apologizing pre-emptively and the Jewish habit of answering questions with other questions. Note also that Buenos Aires is where Lunfardo was invented - a dialect that intentionally mixes up syllables to confuse the uninitiated, somewhat like Cockney rhyming slang does with entire words. 

Borders, Broken Toilets and John Wick

With one of us on a plane back to Canada, the remaining pair began making our own preparations to leave Chile behind. We were moving on to Argentina. Although flying was a possibility, it seemed a shame to cross the Andes without actually seeing them. So we decided to take a bus to Mendoza, the first major city in Argentina after the border. We had had a small taste of South American bus travel on our way to and from Valparaiso; the trip to Mendoza was a full meal.

There is no North American equivalent to bus travel in South America. There are dozens, if not hundreds of competing companies. Some companies offer varying levels of service, much like airline seating classes. Many companies only focus on a few routes, perhaps because of the number of buses in their fleet. Needless to say, standing in the largest bus station in the largest city in Chile and trying to figure out the best way to cross the Andes was no easy task for two gringos.

Complicating the situation was the crossing itself – El Paso de los Libertadores, the gap in the mountains that connects Chile and Argentina, had been snowed in over the previous few days. As we asked around the ticket offices at the bus station, most of the providers told us they weren’t running buses to Mendoza the next day, when we hoped to go. A few mentioned that they might cancel, but they were optimistic about crossing during the day and that they had snow chains if necessary. And one stated very clearly that they were going. One hundred percent. So we bought two tickets, which included our seat assignments and the platform number, and returned the next morning for the journey over the mountains.

Waiting to depart from Santiago.

Things began smoothly enough. We were told to wait before loading baggage, then watched an Argentine family pile a household’s worth of boxes and luggage into the hold. We managed to sneak our bags in with help from a baggage handler (who asked for his tip first) and hopped on board.

We quickly realized that our seat numbers – which the ticket agent had made a special effort to ensure we knew – might as well have been e and π for all the good they did. Some pairs of seats were not labelled; the ones that were numbered did not follow any logical sequence. We made our best guess, then asked the people nearest us if they agreed. They did. Every successive passenger went through the same process, some less pleasantly than others. One Japanese tourist walked through the entire bus trying to figure out the numbering system, then gave up; it took some convincing for the Argentine family with all the luggage to give up their claim to the seats we were in. Luckily, the bus was not sold out (or overbooked, United Airlines!!), so everyone was able to settle in somewhere.

The two of us were more bemused than annoyed by the little frustrations we faced; that attitude proved useful throughout the day. After about an hour on the road, I headed back to use the toilet. Now, I don’t have high standards for bus toilets. I’m comfortable with the idea that I might have to hold my nose, brace myself against a wall, or wash my hands without soap. Or all three. Or more. But the toilet on this bus looked like it had been lifted from an abandoned house somewhere out in the desert. Not only was there no soap, there was no toilet paper; the seat was hanging off the bowl and the latch on the door was broken to boot. This was the state of things at the beginning of the trip. They could not have more effectively said “Do Not Use This Toilet” if they had literally written that on the door. I went back to my seat and told my friend we’d probably want to hold it for the next eight hours.

From what we could tell, the bus had two staff, both sitting in the front and alternating driving duties. At some point before beginning the climb up to the pass in earnest, the staff member who was not driving remembered that there was a DVD player on the bus to entertain the passengers. He threw on a film neither of us knew, but that we now know all too well – John Wick. Luckily, he left the audio in English, so we could follow along as Keanu Reeves screamed grammatically incorrect phrases at the people he killed to avenge his puppy. The scenery deserved a better soundtrack, but it was jaw-dropping all the same. One section of the drive included roughly 30 switchbacks with no guardrail; there was also a ski lift that passed right over the highway. The roadsides were filled with cars that had pulled over so kids could sled and throw snowballs.

On the way up.

Then we reached the border. Readers, I have crossed many borders; I have had many long waits and many short waits. I once crossed the Canadian-American border less than a month after September 11, 2001. But I have never seen a line like this one. It was less a line and more a linear parking lot. For about thirty minutes, we sat on the bus looking out the window. Then a few other passengers stood up and headed outside, presumably to smoke while we waited. We used the excuse to get some fresh air. As we stepped off, the driver told us not to leave, as we’d be in the customs plaza in five minutes. Never has a more obvious lie been told, my friends.

A portion of the line for the border.

When we stepped onto the snow, we first realized that the passengers who had stepped off for a smoke were nowhere to be seen. We walked toward the customs plaza, thinking that would let us catch up with our bus when we saw it move. And then we saw where everyone was going. Next to the plaza was a small strip mall of ramshackle sheds to serve people waiting to cross into Argentina. Only then did we realize just how long this wait might be.

Tuck shoppe at the border (not duty-free).

Double-checking that our bus had not moved – it hadn’t – we decided to become part of the sandwich vendors’ captive market. Unfortunately, a long line for the border meant there was also a long line for sandwiches. Aware of that fact, none of the staff were in a rush. We saw several people lose spots in line because their bus had advanced; we also learned the hard way that we had to order and pay first – in a separate line. We were past the point of being worried, however, and continued to marvel at the whole concept – businesses that only existed because of inefficiency - as we waited.

Killing time at the border.

As we left the sandwich stand wiping crumbs off our lips, two vaguely familiar faces approached. Fellow passengers, we realized. One of them spoke some English, and asked if we had been through customs yet. No, we replied; our bus was still seventh in line and hadn’t moved in half an hour. Then we noticed the bus driver – who had said we’d be through in five minutes – marching toward us with a sour look on his face. Luckily, we had our passports on us and followed him back to the customs plaza.

He grumbled something to the border agents about us acting like little princes, and the woman in the booth made an unimpressed face at us when we handed over our passports. She stamped them, and we walked off; a minute later, the bus driver hollered after us to come back. We had only been stamped out of Chile; the lady to the right of the Chilean agent was the Argentine agent waiting to stamp us in. Though I am normally the first to accept blame for silly misunderstandings like that, I somehow feel like the three people – the driver and the two customs agents in the same booth – who knew the routine could have taken less than a minute between them to call us back.

The bus driver firmly guided us back to the bus, and drove it into the plaza. We were told to disembark with all of our hand luggage, and baggage handlers took out everything in the hold. Customs agents skimmed over our hand luggage and a few people were picked out for fairly casual screenings. One of our bus drivers ran through the passengers with a tip cup for the baggage handlers, then told us to get back on the bus. With the door still open as we boarded, the driver yelled “¡Vamos!” and stepped on the gas. He stopped almost as soon as he started, possibly just to scare us into boarding more quickly. The people on the steps waiting to get in were shaken – literally – but unharmed, and we got underway without further issues.

Night had fallen as we entered Argentina, our eight-hour journey having become a twelve-hour one. Despite the day’s stresses, we were both able to laugh at the sheer insanity of the trip. A quick check of the toilet revealed that it had actually gotten worse – somehow an empty roll of toilet paper had ended up in the bowl, and the seat was now fully on the floor. To top it all off, the driver eventually remembered that the movie had finished, and hit the play button again. And so we made our way into Mendoza, heart of Argentine wine country, to the sounds and sights of Keanu Reeves kicking Russian gangster butt…again. 

Highway (and Airplane and Bus) Chile

I had grand plans for what I would write about my trip to South America last summer, and have achieved none of them. After that five-week adventure, I began another that was unlike any I’ve been on before – moving across the country to pursue a relationship. Adjusting to sharing my life with another person (and to life in Alberta) has been uniquely challenging and rewarding, and has moved the writing of blog posts a few steps down my priority list. So this post is less involved than I would have liked. But it is at least something, before the memories of last summer’s trip become so covered in dust as to be unrecognizable.

My time in South America began with a week alone in Santiago, Chile. Two classmates from Dalhousie would be joining me later. That gap was mostly a result of more ambitious trip plans that I had reduced, but it also gave me time to adjust to the new surroundings on my own. As the most experienced Spanish speaker of the three of us, I needed some time to revive my knowledge; as the instigator of this trip, I wanted to be somewhat comfortable before they arrived.

I had never been to Latin America, and despite my well-worn passports, most of my travelling has been in first world/OECD/developed countries. I’m ashamed to admit that I had something of a siege mentality for that first week in Santiago. I walked everywhere, partly to see the city but partly to avoid the challenge of taking the subway. I didn’t make much small talk. I think my worst fears were that Santiago would turn out to be like Marrakesh, the only other second-world/non-OECD/developing city I’d visited. It had been impossible to avoid hawkers there, and asking questions just meant being hassled for money before long.

My fears were baseless. Chile is (I believe) the most developed country in Latin America. I walked through crowds of people with no one batting an eye at me, most of them too busy on their smartphones to notice that I was not from there. Santiago is Chile’s largest city, but it’s hardly a tourist hotspot. That gave me a comfortable level of anonymity as I wandered around.

Each week of this trip deserves a separate blog post, but here are three highlights/observations about Santiago:

It’s mostly flat, but a couple public parks had excellent views of the surrounding Andes. Walking on Cerro San Cristóbal was particularly memorable for the chapel/amphitheatre at the hill’s summit; it was also there that I noticed just how many tourists to Santiago come from other Latin American countries.

A large area of Santiago’s downtown is pedestrianized, which made us three urban planners wet our pants with excitement. During business hours, the pedestrian malls were packed with people of all stripes: vendors, customers, people-watchers, chit-chatters and checkers players.

It was not until after I left that I realized how polluted Santiago is. It’s hardly surprising, given its glacial traffic. But I learned later that I had spent my first week walking through smog so dangerous that children and the elderly had been advised to stay inside.

After a week in Santiago, I was ready to move on when my friends arrived. Luckily, they quickly were too. We hopped a bus to Valparaíso, on the coast. It was one of the few destinations in Chile I was aware of before researching for this trip. Three quick highlights:

Valparaíso is made up of nothing but hills (42 by some counts). Therefore, elevators make up an important part of the public transit system. The elevators are old, still mechanically operated and are dirt-cheap to travel on.

Almost every surface in Valparaíso has art on it; murals are especially popular. There is a thriving arts community that benefits from the city’s tourist industry without catering exclusively to it.

Valparaíso is also a major port and the main headquarters of the Chilean navy. The port, the hills and the arts community made me think of both San Francisco and Wellington.

Our visit to Valparaíso was probably too short, but one of my friends was only staying for nine days, and sights had to be seen. In the most complicated travel day of our trip as a trio, we took a bus from Valparaíso to Santiago, another bus to Santiago airport, then a flight to Calama and another bus to San Pedro de Atacama. If you’ve heard of the Atacama Desert, you may know that it is the driest place on Earth. Being right next to the Andes and in the Atacama, San Pedro is in the middle of some pretty dramatic geography. We did our best to see as much of it as possible via organized tours. Three quick highlights:

Just west of San Pedro is la Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon). Reminiscent of Tatooine, it was an aggressive reminder that deserts are more than just flat sand and hot sun. In that extreme setting, it almost feels like you can watch geology happen. The wind was overwhelming.

The salt flats near San Pedro are among the largest in the world (Uyuní, just over the border in Bolivia, is the largest). A visit to el Salar de Atacama gave us the chance to go swimming in the saltiest water any of us will ever see, taste, or frantically wash off when it starts to crack skin. It was also freezing cold – it was winter, after all – resulting in this memorable picture.

We also got super high when we were in San Pedro. 4,320 meters high, to be exact. The Tatio geyser field in the Andes looks its best at sunrise, they said, meaning we woke at 4 in the morning to get there. The combination of waking early, altitude, and freezing temperatures made for a physiological roller coaster. Jumping in a thermal pool right when my feet lost feeling was a welcome relief.

After waking at 4 in the morning, we spent one final afternoon in San Pedro before flying back to Santiago. One of us flew home; the remaining two prepared to cross the Andes by bus. The journey we took on July 20, 2016 deserves its own blog post. Stay tuned.

Add llama to the list of animals I've eaten.

Une Rue à Deux Sens

My time in Quebec came to a close almost a month ago.  Given the province’s unique history and identity, it was a year that offered no shortage of reminders that identity politics are a two-way street. While I would hardly call myself an expert on the issue, here are a few snapshots that stick in my memory.

Because Quebec has been officially recognized as a “nation within Canada," the provincial government is called the National Assembly. I had known that before I arrived. But the “national” distinction is in other areas of the public sector as well, including the provincial parks. As a result, the naming system for provincial parks can be easily confused with the federal parks that happen to be in the province, as any provincial park is formally called a “national park.” From what I can tell, the two are distinguished as “parcs nationaux” and “parcs nationaux du Canada.”  

Even more than its overarching national identity, I was struck by how clearly people distinguished different regions of the province. My students from Quebec City jokingly referred to the weird accents people have in Gaspé, Lac Saint-Jean, and Montréal, all while disregarding that all Quebeckers have funny accents. Laval University’s radio station even ran a program in which people from different regions debated their various strengths and weaknesses. I was impressed to learn that they found representatives from some of the more distant regions (Abitibi-Temiscamingue and Cote-Nord), but Quebec City - la capitale nationale – draws people from all over the province.

“Locally grown” has become a trendy label throughout the Western world, but Quebec’s inward focus seems to have put it ahead of the curve. It’s not only hipsters and environmentalists who buy locally grown in la belle province, and it’s not necessarily for environmental reasons, but out of national pride. Produce grown in the province is labelled with a big fleur-de-lys sticker, and dairy products usually name the specific farm of origin. That said, Quebeckers aren’t proud of everything they produce – bringing a sample of its miniscule wine industry to a party does not impress people. Believe me, I tried.

Having a strong sense of one’s origins and identity is a good thing for many reasons that, in the interest of space, I will not discuss here. In my experience, however, it can also limit one’s curiosity and understanding of differences. Many of my students had never left Quebec; those who had seemed surprisingly unaware of things beyond the province’s borders. As stunning as it was to me, my students’ lack of curiosity was unfortunate but harmless. Many of them had just finished high school and were studying to be paramedics, nurses, and a variety of other professions about which I know very little.

   

However, my fear is where that lack of curiosity leads in the future. After the Christmas holidays, I began tutoring a couple in their fifties that wanted to learn English to travel across Canada and get to know their own country better. Especially given what I knew about many Quebeckers’ typical attitudes, I was impressed at their interest. Then one day, they told me about a trip they’d taken to Montreal that weekend. Montreal is about two hours away from Quebec City, but culturally much more distant. My two students didn’t like it there very much. Why? “There was…trop de râce.” Literally: “Too much race.” They then proceeded to list all the races they saw using words that would end a politician’s career (or in Donald Trump’s case, launch one).

As I’ve said, identity politics are a two-way street. How do we balance out the positives (sense of belonging and connection) with the negatives (limited curiosity, disdain for those outside the community)?

One of my students works at a fast food restaurant near a highway and serves a lot of Anglophones. His English is not perfect, but it’s better than many Quebeckers. He told me a story about a very demanding Anglophone couple who were unhappy when the restaurant could not meet their very specific requests, and had little patience for his limited English. The student was understandably annoyed that, in a restaurant within throwing distance of the house in which he was raised speaking French, he could be judged inadequate by customers for being unable to speak his second language well enough. In response to his story, I explained my approach as an Anglophone living in Quebec City – to begin every conversation with a stranger in French, only switching to English with their approval. Another student in the room said “That’s it. That’s respect.”

Cyclists waiting to cross on part of Quebec's Green Route.

Quebec City skyline.

Yours truly tapping a maple tree.

Epilogue:

When I left Quebec at the end of May, I stopped for coffee just outside the city. A large crowd was waiting, not really in line, as they read the menu. The woman behind the counter asked, in French, if anyone was ready to order. It was a shock to the system to hear several of the group belligerently respond in Australian accents, “Sorry, I don’t speak French.” As I stepped ahead of them to order, I grumbled inwardly before realizing the irony in an Anglophone getting annoyed at other Anglophones for not speaking French. What did I say about this place being unique?       

Par-laying the Fran-say

It’s been two months since I began my job here in Québec City, and the process of transition has been smoother than almost any of my previous moves. Although experience has definitely played a role in simplifying the adjustment, it also helps that I am moving within my own country. Not only is my new home within a day’s drive of Anglophone Canada in either direction, it’s also still in Canada. The differences of language and culture are definitely significant, but most little things are familiar – I still buy the same brand of pasta, collect the same grocery points, use the same bank, and watch the same sports. Autumn sets in just as quickly, and people complain about the temperature almost as much (admittedly, Haligonians have more to complain about).

The most obvious and defining difference in Québec is language, of course. I last studied French in high school almost (gasp!) a decade ago. Since then, I’ve confused myself by studying German and Spanish, becoming almost fluent in Spanish after being immersed in it for a school year. I also threw in a bit of Dutch, Kiwi English, and urban planner-ese for good measure. Suffice to say, my limited French resources were buried deep in cobweb-ridden parts of my brain, probably next to the names of elementary school classmates who moved away and my lacrosse skills.

But I had hope! Anglophones have fearfully referred me to the fact that 2 out of 3 Québec City residents do not speak English, but I prefer to see it as a glass 1/3 full. After all, some of my Odyssey colleagues have been placed in towns where the English glass is only about 1/100 full, so I’m rather lucky. The balance of languages here means I can practice French all the time if I want, but I am not obligated to. Store clerks are usually able to switch to English, and servers frequently offer a choice between the two languages; some will even ask if you’re learning French to give you the opportunity to practice.

That said, I usually make the effort to speak French when I’m out and about. It’s mostly for fear of being rude that I won’t ask people if they speak English; instead, I steamroller ahead in poorly-pronounced French until they decide to switch over. And the more I try French, the less necessary English becomes. My comprehension is still pretty weak, so I’m not shooting the breeze with any strangers, but I can usually get what I need (a library card, for example). I’m pretty impressed with how far I’ve come in two months, given that I’m basically building from French 2 in high school, my knowledge of Spanish, and my experience reading food labels in two languages over the past 8 years.*

I have also come to a couple important realizations lately. Firstly, Québec French is not my high school textbook’s French. It’s not even uniform across the province. Pronunciations are weird. English words appear at unexpected times. There are even phrases made up of English words that are not phrases in English, but work as such in Québec French. The other day I heard a francophone telling a story that included the words “bye bye, Charlie Brown” as if they had some agreed-upon meaning. I’m sure it does to him, but I’ve never heard it in English.

Secondly, I’ve realized that French as a whole is not easy. Growing up speaking English, all I heard from language teachers was how complicated English is and how every other language followed its rules more closely and oh, weren’t we lucky that we learned the hardest of all languages as our first…bull. French has as many exceptions, weird expressions, and strange rules as English. You can tell by the number of times I’ve asked people to explain various things and heard “I guess we just say it that way” in response (that almost never happened in Spain).

These realizations have been extremely liberating when it comes to trying out my French in public. Did I just say that wrong, or is this language just weird? Did I just put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, or am I just speaking with a Parisian accent? Did I just cheat by using an English word, or is it one that Quebeckers use too?

Who knows? At least I have a library card now.

Traffic calming for bicycles near my new place. You can take the nerd out of planning school, but you can't...

The first time I've had an office with my name on it!

The dunes near Tadoussac.

*When my French roommate asked what was in the clam chowder I made, I quickly dove into the recycling bin for the empty can of clams and said, “uhhh….palourdes.”