Montreal Has an Attitude Problem

 Salut mes amis!  Ca va bien?  I am muthafuckin' cultured.  So this weekend, Lizzie and I decided to make good on our plans to go north to Montreal and Quebec city.  We left Friday afternoon, drove up through New Hampshire and Vermont (stopping to use the fantastic botanical pee greenhouse in Sharon, VT--the sewerage ran through a series of plants to reclaim the water.  Poor pee plants) up into Quebec.  Once we crossed the border, we got a little lost, and drove through the countryside, encountering lots and lots of olfactory adventures (mostly cow shit) before finally arriving at our hotel in Montreal,  Novotel, which Lizzie had pre-booked for us.  LOL FOREVER!  The fine folks at Novotel had overbooked, and decided not to honor our reservation, so we had to drive over to the Sheraton and pay a MILLION MORE DOLLARS (Canadian) in rates and taxes.  The joke's on you, though, Novotel, because now the four people who read this blog will never book with you.  Seriously, though, the clerks at the Novotel were hella rude, and I hope they get cursed with a plague of termite/bed bug hybrids.  Unrelated, our Garmin's French accent is hilarious.

At the Sheraton, we went up through the stabby garage (there was a staircase to no where--we had to go back down and find the elevator) and then landed at the bar.  As Lizzie and I drank away our troubles (as you do) this stunning young woman sat down two seats away from us, and had just began to enjoy her glass of wine, when the creepiest man in all of Montreal, named Ted, incidentally, sat down next to her, and gave her this bullshit story about how he was a producer for Big Brother, and that he normally wouldn't do something like this, but he was going to give her a private audition because she was so beautiful--she'd be perfect for the show.  He then implored her not to tell anyone, because he was going to murder her, er, I mean, he wasn't supposed to invite people personally to audition, and invited her up to his room.  (Note--Lizzie and I were surprised that he didn't give us this spiel, but altered slightly to invite us to audition for the Biggest Loser.)  This was some serious To Catch a Predator business, and at first I thought she was falling for it, but then I realized she was just placating him so she could escape.  She took his card, which looked like it'd been made on a laser jet printer, promised not to tell her friends, and excused herself, after which Ted sat alone at the bar, scrolling through his Facebook, completely unaware that the chest hair sticking through the top of his zip-up sweater from 1993 was whispering run while you can to all the women in a 10-km radius.

Just as a refresher: if a woman is sitting alone at a bar, it is not an invitation for you to sidle up like a a creepy mccreeperston and hit on her.  If she is flagging interest, go ahead, but if her body language says "leave me the fuck alone.  I just want a goddamn glass of wine before bed," then FUCK OFF.

Note--the Sheraton in Montreal kept charging our card with piles and piles of incidentals, and when Lizzie called to check on what these were, the front desk clerk was also curiously hostile about explaining them (it was basically a hold, in case you were part of a bachelor party, for instance, and projectile vomited all over, well, everything) and it turns out, rudeness was a running theme in dear old Montreal.  It's hard to tell who were tourists, and who weren't, but everyone was pretty consistently douchey.  People usually talk about Parisians being rude, but I've been to Paris, and the people there are lovely and polite, whereas the folks we met in Montreal were the rudest asshats we've ever encountered.  It smacks of desperation, like "being aloof and dickish is cool.  We will be le coolest."  You are not.  You are not Paris.  I'm sorry, but you're going thave to deal with your inferiority feels.  Any city that takes jay-walking as seriously as Montreal does (ask my friend Lisa) needs to engage in some self-reflection.  (Lizzie and I are going to put together a "how to walk on the sidewalk" primer for the citizens of this fair city as well.  Why are you so hung up on jay-walking when no one knows proper sidewalk protocol?!?!)