mychai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Day #10: JP Learns a New Way to French I have a kittle bit more time than yesterday, but not much. I'll try and touch on the high (and some low) points. Someone emailed me before I departed saying how VIA Rail is much better than its sister Amtrak. I must agree with them on all counts except for one, and that is their customer service of which, for all I can tell, their customer service manual pretty much has one blank page in it. Good points: VIA is really, really fast in everything they do. We were more than 40 minutes late leaving from the station (thanks mostly to Nicole and me, I think), yet we were only 10 minutes late arriving into Montreal. They go full speed ahead and stop for nothing. Well... except for the car separation in the middle of the trip for the half of the train that was going to Nova Scotia. The car separation took 2-3 minutes, then we were back to Dukes of Hazzard speeds. The train has no cafe car, but the cafe comes to you. Someone walks down the isles with all kinds of treats, and you get to take your choice. I like that. Less effort from me. Bad Point: It took Nicole and me 50 minutes to get our tickets and to get my ticket refunded. The jackass of a ticket agent insisted on arguing with me about EVERYTHING. He swore I didn't pay for my tickets thus shouldn't be refunded. "VIA Rail isn't in the business of giving out free money," he said. It felt good to have him dole out $90 Canadians while I stared him in the eye, smiling away. He also refused to give Nicole her tickets because he wouldn't tell us that the credit card number she gave weeks ago only held the tickets and not pay for them. It took a lengthy conversation with his boss for us to figure this out. VIA Rail is getting a letter of complaint from me, sure 'nuff. When Nicole finally gave him her credit card, we had to argue with him for 10 minutes for him to give it back because it wasn't signed on the back. My last action of defiance was to get the card and a pen from him so she could sign it. I looked him in the eye, pocketed the pen, and headed off to the waiting train. He wasn't amused. Then the train staff lined up and tried to get us to run. Nicole can't run. As in physically, it's impossible. I think I hurled off a few cuss words along the way. They lightened up. I like Montreal, though I am completely lost 90% of the time. It sucks when you can't understand the native tongue. People kept saying that Montreallers all speak French and English. That's a bunch of horse hockey. They all speak French. But English seems to be something that some of them picked up in passing. I suspect Quebec City to be not much better. This town is considerably much more European than Toronto. In hindsight, I don't think I really liked Toronto. The people of Montreal seem much nicer, things are much cheaper (A 3-day mass transit pass here costs $11. A 1-day pass in Toronto was $7.75), and it seems more like travelling out of America here. We went into Old Montreal today where the (forgive my spelling and lack of special characters) Basilique Notre Dam de Montreal is located. We walked by, went down these narrow streets lined with colorful buildings, and smelled the wonderful scents of the different restaurants mingling down the road. I was in dreamland. We ended up eating at a Polish restaurant that was quite cheap. I had a beer, bread, and a hunter's stew of cabage, mushrooms, and some gamey meat for about $13 American dollars. Nicole had some kind of meat rolled in a dumpling, a Pepsi, and some bread for just under $10 American. The food here is quite delish and cheap. Oui oui! Last night was fun. Nicole and I learned a card game from 4 French girls (all cute) which they described as "Uno without Uno cards." I think they were making the rules up as they went. Well, the loser of all six of us had to do something humiliating. And, as you could guess, I was the ultimate looser. They cleared all of the chairs and had me slither like a snake all around the common area. All of the French girls laughed and laughed! I just thought it was fun to spend the evening with French girls. Well, that's about it. I spent $4 Canadian writing this, so I hope you are happy. I don't quite know what we are doing tomorrow or the next day. I'm thinking of leaving Nicole on her own for a day and just walk down random Montreal neighborhoods, see what kinds of trouble I can get into. I hope all is well in your neighborhoods. Salut! (or however you spell it...) 8:00-ish p.m. - Thurs., Mar. 28, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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