Utterly random Montreal brain droppings

[James Bond Agent 007]

Here I am in Montreal, and thus, it's time for another of my brain droppings threads, like I've done with Chicago, Winnipeg and Calgary. Got here last night.

1. Airport. This is almost certainly the worst airport I've ever been to. It's haphazardly arranged, nothing is easy to figure out and is a general mess. To get to customs you have to walk, like, 10 miles through all these passage ways, then go down into this big open area to check in with your passport, then walk another long distance through a tunnel for them to finally take your ticket that the passport machine gave you. Then there's the car rentals. Ugh. Usually when you go to an airport, the rental cars are in a garage across from the main building, and you cross the arrivals road and the rental cars are right across from that in the garage. Or something like that. Easy-peasy. Not so Montreal. First of all, the signage telling you where to go for car rentals was terrible, they didn't even really tell you at all (just a logo on some signs here and there), and even after I asked someone where to go it still wasn't clear. It took me literally 15 minutes to figure out how to get to the rental cars area. What you have to do is get on this shuttle bus at the side of the terminal that takes you to a garage where the rental cars are, as opposed to the garage right across from the terminal. As if that wasn't bad enough, the bus I ended up getting on stalled, like, 5 times on the way to the garage and the driver had a hard time getting it started again. At one point they had to get another bus to push our bus out of the way because it was blocking the road to the garage. Finally the driver managed to get it started long enough to make it to the garage. What should have been a 5 minute shuttle bus ride ended up taking about 40 minutes. If all that wasn't bad enough, when I finally got my rental car, the exit to get on the freeway to 20 East was blocked by cops for some reason, and so I had to go straight ... right back to the airport! I spent another 30 minutes or so driving through the departures lane along with a bazillion other cars, just to pass through!

2. Languages. Literally every person I've interacted with so far has been bilingual. This has to be one of the most bilingual cities in the world. At least 5 times I've gone into a store, restaurant or coffee shop, they greet me in French, then I say something in English, and they automatically switch to English. One time I went into a coffee shop in Old Town, and when I got to the counter all I said was "Cortado." I think the guy could tell just by the way I said "Cortado" that I was an English speaker, so he started talking to me in English (with a bit of a French accent).

Having said that, I can see why the Quebec government goes to such lengths to enforce the French-ness here. At least from what I've seen so far in Montreal, it seems like, if they didn't go out of their way to enforce French stuff, it would be easy for English to eventually take over. Like what's happened in Louisiana (where French is on its last breath). There are a ton of things, like books in bookstores and whatnot, where there is more English-language stuff than French.

3. French. Speaking of languages, the French they speak here has a bit of an ... I dunno, aggressive sound to it. It kinda sounds like French spoken with an Italian accent, or something.

More later. I think I might have some commentary on the retail scene like I did for Calgary, but I still have a lot more to see.