hanging out

Oh we really like Montreal.  The way the city tips down the hill down to the shore you'd think it isn't so good for cycling, but there are cycle lanes everywhere and hey, what a surprise, cyclists everywhere.  The city is green - it's high summer.  We like the external staircases leading up to second-storey appartments.  We like the cosmopolitan feel of the city - a whole heap of different people really strikes us after a month in Iceland.

Mmmm...churros

 We know our friends Ruth and Gordon from BC are cycling towards the city.  We also know that Daniel, who we stayed with in Warsawa in 2012, is hoping to get to the city to meet us.  So we take a student room at a college in the university campus area and stay a few days more.  






The college is a quiet hall of residence.  We get chatting to a fella we bump into in the kitchen.  He's an American.  He knows Manchester because he once visited a German friend there, a singer, who he'd known in New York. Nico? I ask, incredulously.  He looks surprised and then keen that someone might be impressed by the fact that he once lived in the Chelsea Hotel.  Twenty minutes later, after a prolonged monologue that only an American can muster, it's possible he notices my eyes glazing over and my tongue lolling at the side of my mouth.  I have at this point lost complete interest in him, Nico, New York and the whole popculture output of the States from 1960 to 1990.  And I avoid the kitchen from now on.

We spend a couple of days looking around the city and checking out a couple of bike shops and bookshops.  We meet Dan in the park at Sunday lunchtime by the statue "where the conga drummers gather", as Dan indicates.  The last time we met Dan was planning a long bike journey and trying to persuade Marta to join him.  They headed off to Australia together but in the end Dan cycled alone.  He tells us Marta is happy in Australia.  He looks well, still enthusiastic, still full of ideas.  He has been doing odd jobs in Ottawa, where he's staying with a friend.  His bike is somewhere in South East Asia where he hopes to rejoin it for further adventures.  But Dan also is considering teaching English in Viet Nam, at the school we taught at last year.  We give him the low down.  Fore warned is fore armed.  
 

fair-weather campers!

obligatory bike talk

The park is busy with people listening to the drummers, dancing to the drummers, or drumming.  Dan's showing me an app on his phone that I wonder if I'd ever remember the name of should I ever end up with a smart phone in the future.  Gayle is taking photos of a 'happening' - a large number of brightly-painted near-nude people is sweeping through the park, finding things with the same colour as themselves amongst the people in the park.  They don't speak, they make little noise, and in contrast to the nearby drumming orchestra, they appear to be unorchestrated.  But a man is giving instructions.  Finally the Jelly Bean People move off.  Now, what was the name of that app, Dan??

it's happening........right here in Montreal