Welcome to America

_{Mount Robson, British Columbia}

This trip – and really, I think the word odyssey is more appropriate – is technically to Los Angeles, but really has been to Blaine, Washington. Why Blaine? That’s where the border crossing is between Vancouver and Seattle.

The U.S. border service, for Canadians, is like the weather. We are constantly complaining about it, usually personally affronted by it, but for all we carry one, we're usually only ever slightly inconvenienced by it.

Everyone has their horror stories to share: my Dad had heard from one of his golfing buddies that if we didn’t have “the right form” our car could be confiscated at the border. There was, of course, no hint of what “the right form” was, nor was the legality of such a car seizure explained, but such is the mythic power of the U.S. Border service: to listen to Canadians, you would think that the 49th parallel was patrolled by a particularly unreasonable species of ogre.

So, as we left Vancouver, the tension level in the car was high. We had several forms for the car that we hoped were “the right form” (one of which had arrived by fax at our friend’s work yesterday). We had our visa applications, and several other documents we found on the Internet, one of which seemed to want to know if I was or ever had been a member of the Communist party. We had copies of our birth certificates, wedding certificates, college diplomas, and a Merit Badge from when I was in Scouts.

We didn’t need any of it.


_{Forest-fire devastation near Kamloops, as seen from the car}


As we pulled up to the border, my hands were literally trembling. Amynah had her folder of documents sitting discreetly over her swelling abdomen. The guard looked in the window.

“Nova Scotia plates? Wow, that’s the first time I’ve seen one of those.”

“Yeah,” I said, controlling the trembling in my voice, “It was a heck of a drive.”

“I can imagine,” he said. “How long did that take you?”

Ah ha! A question! This had to be a trap. I thought quickly… how long had it taken?

“Uh, yeah. About sixty hours, all told,” I said, then, confidence building, I ventured a joke to prove my Canadian credentials: “There’s a whole lot more Ontario than the world really needs.”

“Oh yeah. Well of course – Ottawa’s there.”

What? Did a U.S. Border guard just make a Canada joke? Who was trying to ingratiate himself with who here?

In any case, he waved us aside, and told us to go to the desk to fill out our visas. This was done by a guy who was about to go off shift, and so was trying to dispense with us as quickly as possible. Anxious that our car should cross the border properly, and having gone to some difficulty to acquire “the right forms” we asked if we could import it legally. He gave us a doubtful look.

“Well, you could… I guess. But it’s up to you,” he said, in a tone that made it clear that he would prefer that we not bother. When we indicated that we wanted to, he sighed, and called over a colleague to help him out. I suspect if we hadn’t mentioned it, no one would have brought it up at all.

In any case, we’re now in Seattle, about to have dinner with a friend here, and then make our way south to Los Angeles. Three countries, eight provinces, and 6500 km on, the final leg of the journey begins!

Jumping off a pont

Though I am far from completely comfortable in French, there are many words and phrases that I’ve picked up here that have infiltrated my English, as they are simply better, or more evocative than their English equivalents. Today, as I was out this morning taking photos for tomorrow’s post, another occurred to me.

Even though it was 9:00 AM on a Monday morning, the city was absolutely dead. This is because of a delightful French tradition called “le pont.” Tomorrow, of course, is La fête nationale, a.k.a. the Bastille Day holiday. As it is on a Tuesday, many French take Monday as a “bridge” (pont) between the weekend, thus creating a four week holiday.

The practice isn’t unheard of elsewhere, but France is the first place I encountered that has a special word for it (though I’m told Spaniards use the word “aqueduct” – with its multiple arches - for when one takes, say, a Wednesday, has a holiday on Thursday, then the last span of Friday vaulting one to the weekend.

The “pont” is not just for slackers, either. I’ve a friend who works for a company that makes laser-fabricated yo-yos here in Strasbourg (don’t ask). He is required to take the pont, even though it isn’t an official holiday.

I haven't abandoned the tour! The photo above isn't intended as a insult to the French: it's tucked into a high alcove on a building on Rue de l'Epine. Apparently, young maidens desiring a husband would rub it for luck. I like how they even painted the reeds of a little marsh behind it, to make it feel at home.

In the Court of the Pumpkin King

_{Gaspard greets the guests}

Well, as hinted at in last week’s post, Amynah and I hosted a pumpkin carving party chez nous this past weekend. It was a little early for Hallowe’en, but perfect timing to celebrate the temporary return of our friends Danielle and David. The latter showed his gratitude by rushing home after the soirée in order to scoop me on his own blog. His take on things is well worth a read.

Our goal, in hosting a pumpkin party, was to allow guests to engage in an activity that, by it’s goopy nature, tends to break down people’s reserve. Hallowe’en being an almost entirely North American phenomenon, it also allowed me to show that we burger-munching lumberjacks do have cultural traditions as well, inexplicable as they may be.

We ended up with nearly forty guests. About half were from Amynah’s lab, many of the rest were former French or English students of Danielle’s from Amynah’s institute. A theology professor, on sabbatical in Strasbourg from McGill showed up with his wife and daughter were the only other Canadians - but every other inhabited continent had a representative, almost none of whom had ever been encouraged to play with their food in this way.


_{The massacre begins}

I had spent much of the week fretting about local pumpkin quality. Strangely, French people seem to believe that the primary purpose of pumpkins is to be eaten, rather than turned into a ghoulish effigy. Most pumpkin-like objects are therefore unsuited for carving, being too small or too fleshy for the purpose.

So when people showed up with miniature squash that might serve as earrings on one of Howard Dill’s monster gourds I was convinced that we were going to have to make an emergency run to reinforce the battalion of 17 pumpkins we’d already recruited to sacrifice themselves in our cause.


_{Natasha wants in on the fun. Sebastien begs her to reconsider}

I needn’t have worried. While I hovered anxiously over the operating table we assembled in our living room, pumpkin novice after pumpkin novice turned out Jaques de Lumières worthy of any discerning collector from even the least promising of vegetables.


_{The artist and her masterpiece}

The ridiculousness of my worry became clear fairly early on, as I was attempting to instruct a friend on the finer points of carving a lid. I asked the theologian’s daughter if she’d done this before, to which she replied “Yeah. Twelve times.” “How old are you?” I asked. “Nine,” she replied. Given that I had only carved my sixth-ever pumpkin earlier that afternoon, I left her to supervise everyone else’s efforts, in order that I could do my part to lessen the load of food causing our sturdy dining room table to sag in the middle.

By the end of the evening, our friends and colleagues had produced some twenty grinning, shrieking, cringing, laughing, grimacing visages. We assembled the fruits of our labours on the back verandah, where they formed a flickering, gruesome choir. Many more photos here

May Day

Yesterday was May Day which is still an actual holiday in France. In terms of holidays, it’s a bigger deal than Christmas, if the importance of a holiday can be expressed as an inverse ratio of public tranport service (Christmas, the trams ran once every half hour. Yesterday, not at all).

The telephone poles of Strasbourg had been plastered with retro-revolutionary “Take to the streets” posters, so we were unsurprised when our morning was interrupted with loud chanting and music. Turns out the May Day parade was going right by our house.

As a history enthusiast, this was sort of like going to the zoo for a wildlife biologist: Hey look - actual Communists! I thought they were extinct! They followed the much larger union contigents, but they were honest-to-god Communists (not a bunch of teenagers with an ill-understood copy of the Manifesto. Reflecting the hard times they've fallen on in recent years, the Marxists were splintered into about a dozen factions, including the three dudes (one of whom was about 7 years old) representing the Union Senegalese Communists. The largest of the communist groups even had a banner with the faces of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. (Dear Comrades: If I may share just a thought for your consideration. Stalin - really? That’s the face you want on your banners to advertise your ideology? You don’t think he might be even a little off putting for anyone who isn’t a complete sociopath?)

Parade over, we hopped on our bikes to have a nice outdoor lunch with a Canadian family we know here. On the way, we passed about a dozen sellers of fleur de lys. It is a tradition, (strictly enforced” to sell little nosegays of these things on May first. This being France, which has no shortage of rules, you can actually be fined for selling them any earlier than May Day.

Despite my curiosity, we didn’t buy any. Instead, for your viewing pleasure, we did acquire some roses from our friends, whose front yard is overgrown with them. They are now sitting in our plastic water bottle cum flower vase and making the apartment smell nice.