Friday, April 1, 2011

Tales of an Urban Newbie: The Trials and Tribulations of Acclimating to a New City

(This series of articles about my getting to know Montreal is also featured on the website www.CollectivelyBeautiful.com, along with many other useful, interesting, and thought-provoking pieces - take a look!)

So, although I’ve visited Montreal several times before, and have visited countless other cities, I’m still incredibly directionally challenged.  And that’s just the icing on the cake.  Add in the fact that I’m most familiar with running on New York time (where just about everything begins at least 45 minutes after it’s supposed to) and it’s a recipe for disaster.

Firstly, I’m not sure if it’s just my apartment, or apartments all over Montreal, but I’m fairly certain that everything in my apartment, from the front door locks to the knobs on the stove, work backward.  I arrived to my apartment after a 20-hour train ride from Nova Scotia, I had 9 pieces of luggage with me, and was stranded in the hallway because I couldn’t unlock my door.  

After 45 minutes of turning one lock, then the other, then turning them back again, I finally managed to make my way inside.  I’m used to locks that unlock when you turn the key counter clockwise, and lock when you turn them clockwise; however, my new door does just the opposite.  I don’t know any other person who has broken a sweat unlocking their front door, but I somehow managed it. 

One can’t live in an apartment without food in it, so I decided it was grocery time.  I headed down the street to the local Metro to pick up the usual basics and everyday items.  What I didn’t realize upon exiting the store was that there are, in fact, two entrances/exits in two different sides of the building.  I, of course, exited out a different door than I had come in, without realizing it, which resulted in me walking four blocks in the wrong direction with five heavy bags of groceries.  When I realized how lost I was, I gave up and called a cab.  I had walked in the precise opposite direction of my apartment.  Five dollars, and less than three blocks, later my less was learned.

Now, I was starving.  I hadn’t eaten since the night before on the train when I had a miniscule egg sandwich with couscous, which was grossly overpriced.  I put a pot of water on the stove and waited for it to boil.  This attempt gave me a whole new appreciation for the saying, “a watched pot never boils.”  I waited, and waited… then waited some more.  Nearly an hour passed and the water was still just barely warmer than room temperature. 

What I didn’t realize, that my front door lock and stove knobs had conspired against me.  For every stovetop appliance that I’ve used in recent memory, you turn the knob counterclockwise, to turn it on, and as you continue to turn, the temperature will get hotter and hotter.  This was not the case in my apartment, but the complete opposite.  And, to make matters work, only half of the burners on the stove are functional.  I’m surprised I didn’t pass out from exhaustion by the time I finally managed to make my meal.  Needless to say, I expected the worst when I went to take a shower later that night.  Thankfully, showers are pretty fool-proof.

That weekend I had planned to see a band called the Radio Dept. that I’ve been waiting to check out for about a year now.  They were playing at a little venue that is inside a bigger venue, on Rue Prince-Arthur.  Tickets were only $15, and even though there was a blizzard outside, my roommate and I decided to brave the weather for some good live music.  We left our apartment at 10:45 pm, expecting the headlining band to go on around 11:30 pm or so. 

My assumption was based on the usual schedules of shows that take place in the greatest metropolis in North American – New York City – and this assumption couldn’t have been farther from actuality.  After trudging though the snow with the wind howling past us, we arrived at the venue.  It was around midnight and as I ran up the stairs the anticipation continued to build, but when I got to the top of the stairs and sprung through the door, the venue was empty, the stage was torn down, and the music was no where to be heard.  I asked the bartender what time the bands usually come on.  She helpfully responded, “Anytime”.  “Yeah, thanks,” I thought, “That was really helpful.”

I sulked my way to the other, larger venue there, since we’d already paid cover.  It wasn’t exactly the live rock I’d expected, but we made the most of it anyway.  After evading a creepy Swedish man who was clearly on mood-enhancing drugs, watching a young guy spontaneously projectile vomit next to us, and dancing and laughing more than I previously considered humanly possible, we headed home. 

It was a successfully unsuccessful first outing in Montreal and a solid way to end my first full week in my new home city.  Though, I was hoping that my skills and timing would get better as time went by.

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