Bonjour-Hi

As promised, a little bit more on the Le Main street, the popular name by which the St-Laurent Boulevard is known. You will probably remember better if I tell you that it is the street where Schwartz's is, the restaurant specialized in smoked meat sandwiches, won't you? Well, the St-Laurent Boulevard not only divides the city in two practically equal parts, but it also draws (more or less) a linguistic line that separates the French speaking from the English speaking Montreal. As you all know, Canada is an officially bilingual country, but not everyone speaks both languages though. Keeping nationalism apart (which most of the time leads to some absurd situations), I cannot think of a better place to learn and practice both languages at the same time.

There is something that I like a lot and that is caused by this linguistic situation, especially in Montreal, and that is the combined way to say hello in many places, the "Bonjour-Hi". This way, the customer is given the election of the language he'd like to use. Another amazing thing that gets me quite disconcerted is the very polite manner, from my European point of view (not judging, just saying that it is a different way to use manners), used in many establishments. What I mean is the question: Hi, how are you today? I know it doesn't mean anything, it is just another way to say Hi, but not being used to it, this question pops out of the blue and I get disconcerted because I've spent all the time on the line trying to build mentally a grammatically perfect sentence in the foreign language which is, of course, suddenly gone!

Anyway, I only have a couple of days here before I continue my trip, and there is still so much I'd like to write about. I'm looking forward to continue and I'm already a little bit sad about my leaving. Especially now that the city is getting its most beautiful colors.