moving on

last day at the hotel. tomorrow we're moving! goodbye exofruits, goodbye whistles of the renaud-bray strikers, goodbye women cleaning our room and making our bed... we hope to blog again as soon as we have an internet connection in our new flat. that should be on friday.

resfest

it's never too late for a last minute decision, so i went to resfest, a festival of short films, music videos and animation. this year and for the first time the festival made a stop in montréal, to be more precise at ex-centris. i've watched cancon, a 'best of' canadian videos and short films. most of the films were really good. for example robota by marc beurteaux was excellent (and appears on the dvd that comes along with this month's res magazine). one more thing about ex-centris: just buying the tickets is an experience. you don't see the girl that sells the tickets in person but on a tv screen. while she sits behind the television, with a camera in front of her. weird.

sérénade

"marie est l'étoile du canada" is written on the ceiling of the portal of the beautiful "chapelle notre-dame-du-bon-secours" in vieux-montréal. we were there to see a concert of the chamber orchestra 'sérénade', in which one of marie's colleagues plays viola. after the concert i asked him if he knew an orchestra in search of a flute player (me!), but alas ... it seems that my quest for an orchestra won't be easy!

styrofoam

it doesn't happen very often that a belgian band is on tour in north america. after two weeks in canada we were lucky to catch styrofoam, aka belgian electronica wizard arne van petegem and his band. it all happened in la sala rossa, apparently a venue owned by one of the guys of godspeed you! black emperor. there were two electric guitars in the band, and an electric performance it was! powerful versions of songs taken from the 'i'm here to show...' album and a selection from 'nothing's lost', including 'bee queen' without backing track (quite unusual for an electronica act i think). more pictures can be found on styrofoam's blog. or here.

l'horloge biologique

on our 'to do in montréal' list: to see the 'québecois' movie 'l'horloge biologique' - plastic operator's "folder" appears on the soundtrack! today was one of the last chances to see it on the big screen. we've missed the first 40 minutes because 1) the hour of the movie was wrongly advertised on the website and 2) we got lost in a labyrinth called l'université polytechnique (the cinéma was hidden on the 17th floor). but "folder" was at the end of the credits, so we didn't miss the song! we hope to see the beginning on dvd one day. with subtitles, because we're still not completely into 'l'accent québecois'.

chez jolaine et sébastien

tuesday night we were invited to a spectacular three course dinner at jolaine et sébastien's place. which reminded us that we seriously need to develop our cooking skills... we got an introduction to the essentials of life in montréal: snow, where to shop, and canadian bands worth checking out!

spinvis

i've added a link to vpro's luisterpaal in 'pieter's links'. on this site you can hear a selection of new cd releases and it's completely legal. not just snippets, but albums from beginning 'til end. which is really cool, especially if you're in canada and can't keep track of most of the european releases. at the moment i'm listening to the new spinvis cd, "dagen van gras, dagen van stro". it's great to hear a new album after the somewhat disappointing live gigs he did the last years. in the studio he's at his best.

marché jean talon

saturday we went to the "marché jean talon", a few stops away from our metro station côte des neiges. the market is largely indoors (luckily), and sells an amazing amount of different kinds of fruit and vegetables. these are all displayed in a surprisingly orderly manner. with all the great colours this makes perfect blog-picture material ...

two times strike!

it might be a coincidence, but since we arrived last week, there were three protest marches passing our front door. marches of only 10 to 15 people, which is almost charming compared to the "generatiepact fuss" in belgium. on the left you see unhappy professors, on the right employees of renaud-bray (the book shop next door) protesting in front of the shop.

streets

today i wanted to check some music shops and i found out that a lot of these shops are on rue sainte catherine (the local meir). so off i went! it looked like all the shops of montréal are located on rue sainte catherine. and it started snowing (for the first time since i arrived).

for us europeans who are used to small streets and old city centers, streets in montréal seem ridiculously long. streets cross the city from south to north, or west to east. an address like "rue blaise pascal n° 8100" takes you nowhere. to remedy this, they often refer to the nearest street crossing the street you actually have to be.

au petit campus

we found a home in canada! today we signed the contract (a giant standard form). the owner of the flat appeared to have a '24 hours shop' (appelé 'dépanneur' au québec), so the contract was signed between the milk cans and coffee packs, on top of a box of crisps. but happy we were.

to celebrate this we went to a concert in the 'petit campus', a fifteen minutes walk away from the night shop. the texan band the american analog set was playing in montréal, after a few shows in europe (london, hamburg and leffinge amongst others). shawn hewitt and the national strike from toronto was support act. i loved the american analog set though they didn't play (my favourite) "the postman". (the picture of andrew kenny above is copyright american analog set. i admit it. i didn't have my camera with me. but he was wearing the same sort of shirt in montréal so...).

côte-des-neiges

so here we are. there were no problems during the flight (chicken tikka massala on my plate and "the wedding crashers" and "the island" on my tv screen), but the woman at the immigration office still appears in my dreams. and i'm not talking about pleasant dreams.

marie arrived one week before me and already did some flat hunting, checked out the good shops in the neighbourhood and made the internet connection up and running. i am spoilt.