Montreal Road Trip

The summer is waning and so the itch to hit up Montreal took over my better senses.  I’m glad we went anyhow.

Mike and I hit the road after work to surprise Philipp at a housewarming party of his.  Knowing Philipp is of the easy natured folk in this world (a club that I also belong to), I knew that if we showed up with a sleeping bag and some beer, there would be no problems in staying for the night.

Armed with road trippin’ tunes and a tank of Ontario gas (only 10 cents/litre cheaper than Quebec!), we hit the road and zoomed to Montreal hearkening back to the days of Dad tearing a strip down the highway with more air under his tires than actual road.

A pitstop at the local grocery store got us some great Quebec beer and then we ended up at the Bell Center where I needed to offload Vero’s Celine Dion ticket.  This was the first of eight shows Celine Dion was having in Montreal and we have had no luck in selling the ticket to anyone.  This is quite unfortunate as Vero spent quite a bit of money on this ticket as a gift to her step-mother, only to have another date open on the tour so she decided to buy two tickets to the show so that her Dad could go as well.  Hence, she was stuck with a ticket to a concert she didn’t really want to go to.

I hit up the first scalper I could find and he blew me off when I asked if he wanted to buy my ticket.  I wanted to know why and it turns out that all the scalpers have excellent tickets (front row, etc.) but they couldn’t get rid of them.  He said the first show of eight is always the worst to try and sell tickets and the fact that there are eight shows means that a lot of people already have legitimate tickets.  He suggested that I ask the guys in front of the stadium but he didn’t think I would fare well.  I thanked him and went on my way to the next scalper.

On the way I was tying my shoe and this leery guy comes right up into my face without saying a word and then gives me a punch on the arm and says “Allo boss.”  Man, that freaked me out.  I just said hello and went on my way.

Unfortunately, a couple more scalpers confirmed the worst…there was no way they were buying my ticket.  With the knowledge that even a scalper couldn’t sell their own tickets, I realized that I probably couldn’t sell my own so I went to Plan B which Vero laid out and said “Maybe even give it to someone in the streets when you arrive to Montreal if we can’t sell it at this point. Might as well make someone happy if we’re not gonna sell it.”.
I didn’t really know how to approach this.  I didn’t want to just hold a ticket in the air and say “Free ticket to tonight’s show!”.  So I started walking back to the car and I heard a few women walking away from the stadium sounding disappointed about something so I asked them if they would be interested in a free ticket to tonight’s show.  Turns out that they had two tickets to the show but it was for the next night but they thought it was Friday night!  They thanked me for the offer but declined and with that I realized that the adventure was hopeless and I stuffed the ticket into my pocket and met up with Mike and we headed to Philipp’s.  I even offered up the free ticket to everyone at the party but oddly enough, there were no Celine Dion fans amongst us…
We found Philipp’s new pad easily (as it is right off the highway…highly convenient for me!) and we climbed the stairs with our cases of beer in tow.  Unfortunately for me, as I bent over to pick something up I heard a ‘rippppp’ and realized that my jeans had split down my ass!  That has never happened to me and I was shocked considering I had purchased these jeans a few months ago on our outlet mall trip!  Come on!  Mike had a good chuckle as my ass was hanging out of these jeans.
We entered Philipp and Gregoire’s place and surprised the hell out of them and I went to get a new pair of shorts to wear for the night.  Philipp was excited to see we made the trek up and commented on how strange it was that I had not replied to his invitation.
A good sized crew showed up during the night and I met a lot of new people, including fellow Germans; Marc, Thorbun (sp?) and some other guy I can’t remember the name of.  They taught me some new German words and now I have to remember that when I clink a beer together with someone, I should say “Bier und frauen unten”.  Don’t even ask me what it means because I kind of missed the translation and the story behind what it *should* mean.
They had even invited all their neighbours so we got to meet a few of them.  One neighbour clued us into the fact that we can easily go up on the roof so we went up there a few times during the night.  Unfortunately at the end of the night, Philipp wasn’t thinking straight and proceeded to drop a beer bottle down one of the black pipes sticking out of the roof.  Lord only knows where that pipe leads to and Chris and I were shocked that he did that.  Only time will tell if we can ever find out where it leads to.
Philipp had also made up this amazing ‘mudpunch’ which consisted of ice cream, fruit and various alcohols.  It was quite tasty and in twenty minutes the entire bowl was gone.
Not much else to say about the event other than it was a hat themed party and I especially liked how Mike borrowed my Oktoberfest hat for the event and I had my nifty new hat from Gaspe.  Everyone had a grand old time…I had a nap for awhile but awoke in time to see some new neighbours invite us over to their apartment and then Chris, Philipp and I retired to the roof for one last drink around 4:30AM.  Philipp also took this time to blow up my air mattress which was much appreciated!
The next morning I awoke around 10AM to move my car down the street.  I wasn’t feeling too hot so I was glad to see my sleeping bag on the floor when I got back to the apartment.  It was a late night for all of us and we awoke a few hours later and cleaned up the house before heading over to Chris’s so we could get a smoked meat sandwich.
We ended up at Nickels diner which was alright but not amazing in the smoked meat department.  It did not matter as we were all starving by 3PM.  After Nickels, we piled into Chris’s car to go to the brew shop to get some ingredients for brewing our own beer.  Chris actually works in this field (studies of yeast on brewing…that sort of thing) and Philipp and him had been delving into the creation of their own beer for the past year.  I managed to have a nap in the car along the ride and we made it to the store at 5PM but the store-owner was gracious enough to open the store up again and let us buy the necessary yeast and malt to make porter.
When we got back to Chris’s place we tried out one of their home-made beers and it was quite tasty and throughout the night I commented on how most of them were better than any other store-bought beers!  We then went through the process of preparing the new batch of beer which is to mix some malt in with some boiling water and then over the next few hours, add various hops (which give a beer it’s aroma/bitterness) while stirring it for the next two hours.  We all took turns at the stirring duty and I marvelled at this concoction that we were creating.  In the end, water is added and then poured into a bucket and yeast will eventually be added and allowed to ferment.  I am interested to see how the entire process works and hopefully will see the final product one day.  May I point out that the porter they were making was called “Port-o-Palmer” porter?  Excellent!
We hung out and had some good laughs during the night but I think everyone was tired from the night before (at least I was!) and we headed back to the house at a reasonable hour, went to bed and hit the road around 10AM after a great breakfast by Philipp.
Thanks to Philipp and Gregoire for the excellent housewarming party!