Québec City, Whale Watching and First days at University

Hey!

What's up in Germany? Last weekend, I've seen a very little part of this huge country (only Russia is larger than Canada!). We visited two cities that seemed to be really close to Montréal but nevertheless, we spent a lot of time on the road... Although the streets are really straight, you're not allowed to drive faster than 100 km/h!

Friday morning at 9 am, we met at the car rental agency to get our car. Along the St. Lawrence River, we went to Québec City. It's the capital of the province Québec and the oldest city on the continent. It's a nice small city with French atmosphere but also very touristic! The city's landmark is the castle Chateau Frontenac, a hotel that has been seen famous guests like the Queen Elisabeth, General de Gaulle and Frank Sinatra. The weather turned quite cold on Friday evening. A good reason to go shopping the next day and buy a warm sweatshirt and a jacket ;-)

Only few minutes away from Québec City, we visited the Montmorency Falls. These falls are higher than the Niagara Falls but it's only a small river.

Our second destination was Tadoussac, a village on the riverside of the St. Lawrence where the river already reaches a width of 30 kilometers. We stayed in a really relaxed hippie hostel. Tadoussac is known for whale watching and that's exactely why we went there. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from our whale watching trip at the moment. I can only tell you that it was a lot of fun to cruise on the river with the zodiac. And we saw some beluga whales, a humpback whale, minky whales and lots of seals. There's one seal per inhabitant of the province Québec! The picture shows the harbour of Tadoussac, the yellow boats in the front are the zodiacs...

Here are some more pictures to show you the atmosphere of travelling in Québec. As you can see, we had a lot of fun from time to time! But the music on the radio was really annoying and the straight roads were quite tiring... So Roland, thanks a lot for driving!!


The villages here are in most cases one row of houses on each side of the street with large gardens without fences but short cut grass. Every village has a huge church of the size that you normally find in cities, with silver shining bell towers. The houses look a little bit like toy houses.

This is how farms look like in this region. They all have these kind of silo towers, often with the name of the farm written on it.

And here are two pictures of the beautiful landscape. Especially in the north, there are so many forests, really amazing! I have to come back to this area when the Indian Summer begins.

And this picture is for my family and the friends from my hometown ;-)

When I returned from the trip on Sunday evening, I could finally move to my room. I'm sure you are curious to see some pictures of my new home. On the first picture you can see the really confortable and huge bed and the shelves. The second shows my desk. And of course, there is also a wardrobe which is not on the pictures.

And this picture shows a part of the huge livingroom and kitchen. I'm living here together with Annabelle and Gabriel, two "Québecois". We're often cooking together in the evening, the doors of our rooms are always half open. I'm already feeling a bit at home here. What else to tell about my flatmates? As they are "Québecois", they speak French or at least something similar to French. They drink a lot of wine, what means that I'm also drinking a lot of wine and less beer or vodka ;-)

What else happened this week? University started on Tuesday and I already had two courses. The first one was really great, the professor is American and thus doesn't speak to fast and if he doesn't know the words in French, he switches to English ;-) In general, all courses last 3 hours with only a little pause of 10 or 15 minutes!!! And I thought that 90 minutes of lectures are long and tiring... The course I had yesterday was quite hard. In the end, I wasn't able anymore to concentrate.

Everyday, I'm learning new things like how can I print lecture notes, how to use wireless LAN at university, where I get a lock (cadenas in French) for the lockers in the swimming pool (I went there two times this week, entrance is free for students!) and so on. I'm feeling a bit like freshman again ;-)

Having my own room, going to university, sports, bars etc makes me feel like really living in Montréal. Yesterday, I picked up a book that I ordered in a bookstore last week. And today, I got a letter here in my new apartment!! I registered for a music course (Jazz et improvisation) on monday and they sent me a corfirmation of my registration.

Well now, it's already quarter to two in the morning. You're already getting up and I should get some sleep now!!!

A la prochaine,

geli