The trips illustrate, teach, expand the mind and the senses and of course the spirit.
Immerse yourself in different cultures it is fascinating, it pushes us to discover new windows and look into other atmospheres and ways of being. It motivates to open doors to satisfy curiosity as recently happened to me.
I flew to Canada, the homeland of the maple, the Appalachians, grizzly and black bears, in fact, there are places where spray is sold to scare them away as if they were mosquitoes. It was a mountebank odyssey: one day here, another there, two in one country, then in another. Saw forest, mountain and sea, skyscrapers and traffic and I imagined my life in those latitudes. First, I got out of my border: Spain toward Bordeaux, France, the land of French wine, where at the entrance to the airport there are vines surrounded by rose bushes. It’s small, like from another era, very retro, vintage. When I arrived, after two hours on the road, when I checked in I found out that I had to get a visa; question I was unaware of. The procedure was online, it cost about twenty euros, and it took me less than half an hour.
After the police control I went to a gigantic waiting room. It was a space without a cafeteria and with only a lousy coffee vending machine. After six hours of flight, I arrived at Montréal founded in 1642, in Quebec, the only province in which French is official. It is the birthplace of Leonard Cohen and Céline Dion.
Surprising for being an island between the Rivière del Prairies and the St. Lawrence River at the confluence with the river Ottawa. Broadly speaking, it is divided into two parts: English and French. The native of Montréal studies in English, the immigrant in French. And everything revolves around both languages, which is fascinating because it jumps from one to the other very easily and if the immigrant is Spanish, Italian, Korean, or Chinese-speaking, that’s a Babel Tower. I visited different neighborhoods that captivate by the architecture of their houses: maximum three floors and with stairs outside, its streets brimming with trees and plants in full spring bloom and mural art everywhere.
I was also in an underground shopping center, which is indicated for the months below thirty degrees below zero. I walked through the financial zone, which looks desolate after the pandemic; the trend now is teleworking. It is striking how the street smells of marijuana rather than tobacco. Also that there are a lot of ‘Hiring’ signs, and apparently, few want to work, is said to be the global trend. “A mystery,” a businessman with five hundred employees, and he needs more, told me, whose company is dedicated to manufacturing real estate for shopping malls, clothing stores, and food chains.
two hours away Ottawa, ontarian, the Canadian capital, which was bursting with tulips, only two weeks a year. It is a district of civil servants in which I found a Mexican restaurant, corn heartwith tacos with great grace and incredible sauces such as chile de árbol with lemon. I was also in the city of Quebecwhere the seed of Cirque du Soleil sprouted and I peeked into the Laval University of architecture, the first French-language faculty in North America whose history dates back to 1663.
Another place that seemed like a fairy tale, I imagine more when it is covered by snow, was Mont Tremblant, a ski and winter sports resort, a favorite of Montrealers. Then, I took the road to the United States, another record that I will tell in my next column because I entered another reality.
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