It depends on what aspect of a place makes me want to return to it. Was it nice for living in alone, or raising a family? Chilling? Being mind-blown every moment? Feeling connected to a better reality? Feeling like I could grow into a better person from surviving it? My all-time favorite place is Montreal. It's probably because I went there without any great idea what to do, and found that it was the perfect place to hang out cheaply while working on a language learning curve. Its very neurosis infected me with purpose. I had taken French in school for five years. I aced it, but then again I love languages. I also had nothing that made me think France was worth the effort. They'd play us bad music and have us read old advertising with terrible graphic design. They'd tell us we could never really get the accents right. Oh yeah, sold. You can keep your accordions. Then I wound up in Montreal after a train ride from New York City on Saint Patrick's Day, 1998. I dropped my bags at a hostel and found a drunken party about a block away. The next week was a blur of discovery. I walked around a lot, rode the metro all over, and saw a lot of trilingual bums. I also saw apartments for rent at really good rates. I couldn't read everything, but I quickly wanted to devour the place. Here was an alive francophone culture, making up words that beat the English ones. Here was a story of North America that seemed nothing like the one I grew up with only five hours away in upstate New York. I saw huge billboard ads for musicians that couldn't get arrested an hour down the road in Plattsburgh. Here were Nietzsche's Hyperboreans, the people beyond the north wind. They weren't afraid of winter, and they would fight every step of the way for a place most people didn't want. They had great junk food, writers, barristas... the works. I wanted to move there right away. I wanted to start traveling a whole lot more, to make I wasn't delusional. Eventually I got to travel a lot more. I went to Belgium twice, a place that has a similar story but is in hibernation. I spent a month in France, which was very different from its external reputation and very worth traveling but also trying to figure out how to accept the rest of Europe. I also went to Austin, Australia, a lot of the eastern seaboard of the US, Tucson, San Francisco, England, and the Netherlands. I drove from Boston (my home for a dozen years) to Los Angeles (where I have now lived for two years). Still, I've never felt more at home than I do every time I'm in Montreal. It just clicks for me. I've taken my dad there twice and he understood what I loved: that connection between language and the Canadian culture. (Canada, especially the ROC (rest of Canada), doesn't think it has a culture and drives itself nuts trying to figure one out. It's the anthropological and sociological version of a barely legal teen.) Too bad my wife doesn't speak French. Too bad I don't feel the same connection to the Hispanic culture of Los Angeles, much as I like it. It's like Navin's moment of whiteness in The Jerk: those are my people, and I want to see them prosper.
Vice-Principal: In the last two months, you've been away three Fridays and three Mondays. If this attendance record continues, you'll be expelled. Me: But then I'd be in school even less. Ahh, Montreal with its European heart, Michel Tremblay grittiness, and the big lions at the base of Mount Royal.They weren't afraid of winter
This is an inspired poetic read for a cold rainy Sunday morning. It reminds me of how I almost got thrown out of grade 12 for going down the highway so many Fridays to spend the weekend in Montreal back when.
The bit about the accent is the reason I skipped over French. I've taken a bunch of languages, Russian being the main and most recent one (my daddy being a Muscovite commie and all), but I wanted to learn French, too. When I overheard my 7th grade French and Latin teachers joking about how bad our accents were, the images of pretension and the French were merged. But that's right, French is spoken outside of France :) Would Montreal be worth a trip if you don't remember any French?They'd play us bad music and have us read old advertising with terrible graphic design. They'd tell us we could never really get the accents right. Oh yeah, sold. You can keep your accordions.
It's absolutely worth the trip. One of Montreal's secrets is that half the place speaks English, but the signs have had to be in French for so long that visitors think everything is only in French. Montrealais have a very intricate dance when it comes to language. I've studied it for years. Francophones are far more annoyed with a lifelong resident that still hasn't learned enough French to buy a bagel than they are with an American that isn't aware of the battle lines. Then again, francophones are not interested in letting you in the club. Deep down, Quebec is very northern New England... and you aren't of the body. They get annoyed that movies from Quebec gets subtitles in France, even though there are six million francophone Quebecois speaking what could be summarized as Ozark French versus sixty million French citizens wondering why these people haven't given up to the damn Irish already. Thus you get a plateau problem (especially in The Plateau, one of the nice parts of town). Either you're a total foreigner so we'll just speak English with you, or you've been in Montreal long enough that "keh ska zzi luh" should mean something to you. ("Qu'est-ce qu'il a dit, là?", "What'd he just say there?") Everything in between is "ça m'tente plus de practiquer la belle langue a'c cette tête carrée, hein?" (I'm fed up with practicing Molière's tongue with this block head, eh?). In summary: you're a tourist. Feel free to speak English. Just overdo your American accent. Oh, and "stationnement interdit" means no parking. They've changed all the "Attendez les clignotants feux verts" (Wait for the flahsing green light) signs into symbols. Oh, and a flashing green serves the job of a left turn arrow. Oh, and just like New York City: no right on red on Montreal island. I have a horrible problem that my English heads into the local anglophone accent when I'm there too long. All of the sudden I'm the kid from Ontario that I always wished I had been when I was a kid watching the CBC out of Kingston.
I have a friend who makes yearly trips in the summer to visit a group of friends she has. If she extends me another invite, I'll accept this time. Internet promise.
I completely agree. I don't love Madrid for the same reason I love Ho Chi Minh City. Wandering around Paris is not the same as wandering around Phnom Penh. Each have their appeal and their drawbacks. I've been to very few places that I wouldn't like to visit again. Sometimes I find myself craving an experience from a place I've visited. For example, I had a filetto alla griglia in Florence one time that made any food I ate for several days seem like it wasn't worth eating. To me, it was the epitome of what the experience of enjoying a steak should be. Likewise, I remember the rainy season in Vietnam. I'd look out the windows of my room and watch as walls of water advanced over the ocean, betting against my housekeeper about how many minutes it would be until the rain lashed the windows, how the rain was the only thing that quieted the constant flow of traffic on the street below and the sudden noise of heavy rain on a corrugated iron roof. For me (and I suspect many others) traveling is less about the place and more about the experiences one has had.It depends on what aspect of a place makes me want to return to it.