Hey my friends!
The end is coming soon, I’m already thinking a lot about my return to Germany and I’m looking forward to it =)
I didn’t post anything for a while and quite a lot happened during this time…
Lisa and Felipe were visiting me here in Canada and I was so happy during the time we spent together. I would love to see all of you here in Montreal in order to show you my life here in Montreal and introduce you to my friends and roommates. I’ve been telling you a lot on my blog during the last seven months but still you only get a very vague impression of what’s going on here…
As I promised you last time, I’ll tell you about my trip to Boston.
I left Montreal at 8.15 am on Wednesday the 3rd of March. Few hours later, my friends from Germany picked up their rental car in New York and took the road to Boston where all three of us arrived at 5 pm. As in a movie, Lisa and me were running towards each other for a big hug =) The only project for our first day in Boston was finding a hotel the next three nights and a restaurant for dinner. We chose the Holiday Inn Express next to a big shopping mall only two metro stations from the city center. That night, I had my first experience with a drive through cash machine –Americans are so car focused!
We should discover a lot more about the American culture during the next day… We started our visit with a free guided tour in the Massachusetts State House. Our guide was an adorable woman in her 70ies who did the tour just for the three of us. As we’re not that familiar with the American history, she explained everything that was necessary to understand the importance of events and persons shown on pictures and statues. Actually, everything was about one of the many battles and wars that occurred during the American history. It’s sad that this is what defines them as a nation… (And if there were not enough wars, they have a TV show called “Food wars” showing 2 guys trying to eat four very huge pizzas within one hour – “food vs. human, human won!”) We also had the chance to attend a session of the Massachusetts Senate that didn’t improve our opinion of US politics ;-) Most of the delegates were late, didn’t pay attention on the bills read by the leader of the Senate but talked to each other or did anything else. Once you see the kind bills that are treated, you may understand this behavior… “Bill validating the actions taken at a special town meeting of the town of Lynnfield” (Does this mean you can do anything and create a law to authorizes your action afterwards??) or “Bill authorizing the town of Milton to issue an additional license for the sale of alcoholic beverages to be drunk on the premises of a certain restaurant”
After this special experience, we visited all the important buildings connected by the freedom trail, did some shopping because there are no taxes on clothes and shoes in Massachusetts and had real coffee or very sweet hot chocolate in little Italy. I really liked the city of Boston, maybe because it’s a quite old town for the North American continent and also the skyscrapers are more beautiful than in New York. And there is a river crossing the city, I like cities with water!
The next day, we went to the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) where we walked through the corridors together with the other students and of course to Harvard. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to enter any building. To finish this beautiful day, we took a bus to the suburbs of Boston. Well, not that we really planned it… There was this famous obelisk that we didn’t have the time to visit before but we were too tired to walk there and it got dark already. So we had the glorious idea to take a bus going to the other side of the river and get off whenever we think we’re quite close to the obelisk. But this bus took the highway and didn’t stop for 10 minutes ;-)
Before we headed for Montreal the next day, we went to a mall of outlet stores in the south of Boston for some more shopping. Hey, I bought Levis jeans for 40 bucks, no taxes (after 7 months here, it’s been weird to pay just the price printed on the ticket). After a long ride through New Hampshire and Vermont we finally arrived in my apartment in Montreal at 10 pm. I accommodated my guests on a huge air mattress in my room (the floor was completely covered by the mattress and the suitcases…) and my roommates accepted them immediately as new roommates (maybe because of the Haribo sweets or simply because they are really nice). They stayed here for nearly one week and had the chance to see Montreal’s sights (Mont Royal, Old Montreal and Old Harbor, Downtown…) but more important, to see how life is like here. First of all, I brought them to the Jean Talon market (a paradise of fresh food, especially compared to the “Target” store in Boston) and introduced them to my favorite market-woman. We went to my old apartment, a dollar store, a liquor store, to the cinema, had poutine (a typical dish of Québec: French fries, cheese and gravy), to Second Cup (the Canadian Starbucks and the place where I was sitting while searching for a new room in January),to the best bakery in town (we discovered that you can have a simple but delicious breakfast for less than 4 dollars!)… and we went to the karaoke bar with some of my friends where Lisa and me sang “Baby one more time”.
I spent the following weekend at Marie-Claude’s in Rivière-du-Loup. She had a housewarming party, so I made bread for the first time in my life and explained the German tradition of bread and salt… Her friends are all really nice although a couple of years older than me – one of them asked me if I already have children (most of them do) ;-) I spend most of the evening on playing Rock Band, singing or playing Beatles songs… And the next day, we took advantage of the beautiful weather for a half day of skiing.
Last week I finally started my project of visiting Montreal’s museums and went to the Museum of contemporary art. Friday and Saturday night, I went to small concerts and finally to the Rockette Nightclub (but just for one hour, have to go there again). Well I’m having a relaxed time, as my teachers are still on strike (it’s so annoying!!!). Let’s see what the following week brings…
Have a good time!! See you soon =)
geli
