In preparation for the work I requested on my bedroom window, I moved my glass figurines to a shelf in the living room, to protect them from damage, obviously. However, it seems that they were far from safe. Apparently, this gentleman offended the revolutionary forces and was subjected the the guillotine, whilst holding the hand of his lady friend and listening to harp music.
However, my Paris-Montreal-USA flight, that's a whole other story. Apparently, when making a connection in Montreal from a foreign country into the US, you have you pass customs for entering Canada, and then quickly thereafter (but not so quickly) you have to enter the US and go through US customs, again, as if Montreal is already part of US soil. Oh but it's not that simple. First, you line up for Canadian customs. Then, you wait forever to get your bags. Then, you walk upstairs, find departure area C and stand in line again. The first line is where you show that you have filled out a US customs declaration. Next, you go through a baggage security line, where they look at your passport. Then you go through US customs. Then, you're able to recheck in your checked in luggage. And finally, a security line with the conveyor belt and metal detector. Oh, and then you must be superspy and find one of the few screens that displays connections to find out which gate you're at. (You hope really hard that that gate is in departure area C as some Canadian dude indicated.) In addition, Montreal doesn't have separate lines for native citizens and foreigners, all the same line!
Onto complaining about security lines... (Ok, I'm not male and black or otherwise dark so I know it's not as bad as it gets) In Paris, the security dude made me take off my little decorative sweater as if it's a jacket, I tried to explain, but only under my breath. What if I were naked underneath? As if I could hide stuff under my nearly skin tight sweater... Then, going through my second set of security in Montreal (the one entering the “US”, so I'm blaming the Americans) the dude manning the area before the conveyor belt was being a total ass. After he watched me put my stuff into the little trays they give you, he tells me how it's all wrong and how to reorganize everything. So I do. Then he makes a signal as if to tell me to go through the metal detector machine. As I am about to, he calls me back and tells me I have to push my stuff onto the conveyor belt. He explains to me that everything should happen slowly, no hurry. I say “so I can miss my plane”. Well, he kindly explains to me that wouldn't be his fault of course. No, of course not, it's the fault of the US government which tries to compensate for its inability or lack of desire to capture terrorists by pissing off its citizens and calling that national security. Then the next dude who's suppose to watch the metal detector as I walk through it, makes vague motions to me. I ask if I'm supposed to go through, another vague motion. After I'm through, he explains that if he were to tell everyone to step through, he'd lose his voice at the end of the day. Well, it's a lucky thing he doesn't sell peanuts at baseball stadiums, he's be dead. Then another security dude starts talking to me as I'm repacking all my stuff as if he's hitting on me. I'm all pissed and in a hurry and he asks me if I were searched yet. I'm not sure if that was in sympathy for my agitated state or a really perverse pick-up line. In any case, I ignored him and thought to myself that if they decided search me, I was going to refuse to go to US afterall (not that that would work because then they think somehow you're their property). Sigh!!!
To assuage my highly irritated mood, I bought a chocolate chiller, yum. I thought it was from Starbucks but I should have known it wasn't since the prices were so much better. Turns out it's a company call Second Cup that has organized its storefront to mimic that of Starbucks to a T.
Oh, and I'm writing this now even though I arrived at my gate 5 min before my departure time because of course now that I made it, the flight is delayed 1.5hrs.
A conspiracy!!
I have to say I was definitely impressed by how clean the city streets were. I expected, from experience and by reputation, that the sidewalks would be virtually coated with doggie-do. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively sparseness of this Parisian specialty. I have to assume that either they are paying the street cleaners extra to ramasse la merde or dog owners have become responsible (unlikely the latter). It was a great change from my memories and from home neighborhood. Oh, and in case you were worried, this is not due to a lack of dogs. No, the dog population (which Stephen Clarke compared to the size of a small army) has not decreased. This was not a bad thing since I was able to see cute little dogs at every turn.
