Wednesday 31 July 2019

Korean Montreal

July 26, 2019:

I often get associated with A-type personalities because I am a teacher. At one time this label might have made sense for me, but more and more I find that being a teacher requires me to be flexible, adaptable and good at improvising. So while I plan my lessons carefully in a sequence, I don't worry too much if we take a detour or need to revise our plan (unless it's for something externally imposed that feels like a waste of time). This need to go with the flow has seeped into my private life, especially when it comes to travel.

I booked a bus for 6:30am on Friday out of Toronto to go to Montreal, not bothering to check if it would be possible to get to Toronto at that time of morning from Hamilton using transit. I had a suspicion after I booked it that it was not the wisest choice, but it was on my mental backburner until Thursday mid-day. Confirmed. It was impossible to get to Toronto by bus by 6:30am, so my choices were to stay overnight in the bus station or to book a hostel or to drive. I looked into the cost of parking for the weekend and concluded that a hostel would be cheaper.

So, Friday at the crack of too-early-for-the-complementary-breakfast I walked to the bus station. This summer I have not  resembled a morning person even remotely and I slept an extra 10 minutes meaning that I had to mad-dash the last few minutes to the bus and was the last person on (and had no time to stop to eat). I still managed to get two seats to myself and slept the entire 6-hour journey.

Upon arrival, the only thing on my mind was food and I saw a sign for restaurants inside a building near the bus drop-off. It turned out to be a busy indoor skating rink surrounded by a food court called Atrium Le 1000. My mom texted me, "City life" in response to this discovery and she was not wrong.

Montreal is one of my favourite cities despite only having visited briefly in previous years (family trip in 2005, International Rotary Youth Leadership Exchange conference in 2010, and a layover with Andrea in 2015 on our way to St. John's). It was attractive to me as a young person learning French for the first time, and as the site of the Rotary International Convention where I met friends from around the world who I've been able to meet again through my travels to Sweden, Den Haag and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Vancouver, and Toronto, and who have come to visit me. All this to say that I have fond memories of this place already.

For my trip in 2010, I bought Frommer's Montreal Day by Day guide book. I still have it, and though there is an updated version (because this version was published in 2010), the metro map and all of the recommended activities were still there. So, using my trusty magic map, I deftly navigated the metro system and got totally lost trying to use Google Maps to walk the rest of the way to the hostel, Alexandrie-Montreal.

I wasn't able to check in until after 4pm so I stored my luggage and set off at random for one of the neighbourhood guides in my guidebook. In my previous visits, I had seen lots of Vieux-Port and spent time around McGill in the Quartier du Musée. The one area and perhaps cliché experience I had not been able to fit in those visits was the Plateau Mont-Royal and the famous poutine shop La Banquise.

I followed the Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood visit guide, beginning with an exploration of the rue St-Denis which is a vegan hipster paradise. Or maybe just a niche-hipster paradise. There were crystal  stores promising healing through some "-ology" I had never heard of before. Fripperies bonheur d'occasion (second hand thrift stores). Art galleries. Comic book stores. Folk instrument stores. Jewellery shops. Boutiques. Furniture design stores. Moroccan and Tunisian craft stores. A robotics café. A Geek boutique. High fashion. A VR arcade. Vegan cafés. High fashion. And an anime/k-pop store.


The first window that got my attention was the Libraire l'Échange, a second-hand book and music shop. It was heavenly and I looked for books that my students might enjoy reading. There were also technical art books that I wish I could afford.
Photo Credit: Librairie l'Échange
Photo Credit: Librairie l'Échange
As someone who enjoys Hayao Miyazaki films and a former Pokémon player, I was intrigued by the store front of Sarah & Tom which had No Face from Spirited Away and Pokemon in the front window and at the entrance to the store.
Photo Credit to Julian Paquier-Galliard

As a member of the BTS ARMY, I was somewhat shocked that the second shop I walked into in all of Montreal was an anime/k-pop store and that nearly all of BTS' albums were there for purchase. Like???? It was probably destiny, right????



Another destiny-like encounter was the giant Renaud-Bray store, which is where I typically order French books for my classroom. Being able to browse books that were all in French by section was dreamy.



I window-shopped some more and stopped at a bar called Auprès de ma blonde to have something refreshing on their terrasse. I connected with my friend, Fabienne, a fellow BTS ARMY who I met online in February after discovering that Twitter is the superior social media platform for ARMY interactions and updates (my hot take), to make plans for that evening.

Finally, I made it to La Banquise and was very happy for their vegan gravy and veggie burger options. I stuck to a classic poutine and a goat cheese and pear burger for dinner. It lived up to the hype. For anyone not Canadian, who has never heard of poutine before, it sounds disgusting and tastes delicious. The salty and chewy cheese curds melting from the heat of the gravy over salty, crispy fries is *chef's kiss*.



My solo explorations ended with a visit to Parc de la Fontaine. On Twitter, I started a hashtag project for fun where ARMYs from across Canada can showcase images of Canada with their BT21 characters, like the travel gnome from Amélie.



Parc de la Fontaine seemed like a perfect place to take a picture with Koya.




I met Fabienne at the hostel and we decided to visit the Quartier des Spectacles. We stopped for food at the Place des Arts foodcourt. It's amazing to me how easily we fell into conversation and transitioned our online connection to in-real-life. I got to see some of the beautiful art installations in that building before we joined the crowded street where Just for Laugh was taking place. We came across the Spotify booth where three drag queens were answering questions and giving their perspectives on different issues related to everything from tucking to Disney remakes. They were genuinely funny and made some much-needed observations about the state of the world.


It was quite late by the time we decided we needed to get to bed and I snuck into my bunk in the dorm, hoping not to wake anyone.

July 27, 2019:

Late in the morning, I met Fabienne near their apartment in Cote-des-neiges and we walked to the Oratoire Saint-Joseph. We discussed our thoughts on religion and architecture, the history and current political climate of Quebec. There was an organ concert playing while we observed the church and I learned about their history in music where one of her classmates was an organist. Apparently, organs are meant to take the place of an entire orchestra, so the organist has to set the instruments as whatever instruments the piece is trying to replicate. For example, they might set the keys to sound like a combination of brass and strings for one section of a piece. Each time they want to change, they have to stop playing temporarily in order to reset the instrument.

Photo Credit: L'Oratoire Saint-Joseph

Photo Credit: L'Oratoire Saint-Joseph

Photo Credit: Taxiarchos228
We finished our visit on the steps of the oratoire overlooking part of the city and continued chatting. Suddenly I heard someone calling my name and discovered that one of my mentor teachers from my first year of teaching was walking up the steps toward me. Her children were competing in the National Track and Field championships in Montreal, so she was exploring the city with her husband. It's a small world after all!

We stopped at Fabienne's apartment so that they could give medecine to their bird and they took the opportunity to share their BTS collection with me. They have been a fan for considerably longer than I have, having listened to and given up on other k-pop before giving them a chance. I got the chance to look at their Wings Concept Book, which reminded me of the Harry Potter studio tour in some ways. It's like the skeleton used by the design team to build the albums, the music videos and other visual content for the Wings era (consisting of three albums). Though this wasn't the beginning of the BTS Universe, it was a crucial moment in establishing their fictional world.
Photo Credit: Tina Davidsson
The fictional universe began during the HYYH era (The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, pt. 1) during the I Need U music video and there are countless theories about the universe since then.


The story of the universe is told through music videos, short films, notes found in the albums, and recently the Save Me webtoon.
Image Credit: BigHit Entertainment Corp. & Lico Corp.
As a literature major, theorizing about the next installment of the story is fascinating, as many of their songs or album concepts use intertextual references to develop their themes.
  • The Owl Service by Alan Garner may have served as a reference for all of HYYH.
  • The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin is referenced in Spring Day.
  • Wings used Demian by Hesse as a reference as well as Greek mythology.
  • Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami is referenced in their song Butterfly. This author's other work, 1Q84 is also used as a reference in their track Sea.
  • The Her album intro Serendipity references The Little Prince by Antoine de St-Exupery.
  • The Tear album references Into the Magic Shop, a memoir by James R. Doty.  
  • The most recent trilogy of albums is based on Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction by Murray Stein. The author has become an ARMY and created a dedicated video series to help ARMY understand the ways that Jungian theory relate to the lyrics in the albums.
  • There is also reference to Greek mythology in songs like Dionysus from the recent Persona album.
The point of all this is to say that I became aware of BTS too late to ever hope to have my own copy of it (a used copy is currently on sale on Amazon for a cool $248) and they have inserts of a translation someone published free online for international fans, so it was really cool to glance through it.

 In the afternoon, we made our way to Mile End where there was a Korean Street Food Market with different events going on. We were quite hungry by then and sought out some vegetarian options leading us to try kimchijeon (kimchi pancakes) and tteokbokki (spicy rice cakes). They were both delicious.
kimchijeon
tteokbokki
There were performances by the Montreal k-pop cover performance group, East2West, who did Boy With Luv by BTS and some other k-pop groups that I'm less familiar with.



 We tried some Korean ice cream, as well, which is packaged much differently than North American treats. We got the LOTTE Snow Ice in cookies and cream and original flavours and they were delicious.



On our way back towards the hostel from the market, we passed nearby the Ubisoft building and I heard more about the game development scene in Montreal, which is apparently quite competitive. We finished off the day on rue St Laurent at Juliette & Chocolat. We had crepes and a chocolate fondue. The vibe there was cool and the waiter was very nice. We laughed for a long time about learning other languages and ridiculous idiomatic expressions and the mistakes people make when learning French. I tried on a Quebec accent but did not succeed.



July 28, 2019:

We spent our last day slowly doing some shopping. I bought a few older BTS albums at Sarah & Tom's and a suitcase from the Centre Eaton which I needed anyway. The Centre Eaton is part of the underground city and it was air conditioned, which after days of a hostel with minimal air conditioning (a window unit for our entire dorm was not sufficient) was sooo welcome.

We bought lunch from the food court. I had bibimbap and they had Japanese ramen. The bibimbap was not the same when not cooked in a stone bowl, like they do at Alirang in Hamilton, but still tasty considering it was fast food.
We "unboxed" my albums and laughed a lot at the old concept photos from O RU L8, 2? and Dark & Wild.
Copyright Bighit Entertainment Corp.
Copyright Bighit Entertainment Corp.
Fabienne was shopping for Fire Emblem and the new Nintendo Switch because they are interested in video game design, especially from a narrative perspective. BTS recently released a mobile game called BTS World and it was fascinating to hear the ways that they would have liked the game to be made that better reflect the interests of ARMY. There are so many gamers in ARMY, too, so their first attempt at a game was a little disappointing. We compared our progress in the game, which does have the advantage of having different photocards and the ability to unlock different content, so it's not all bad.

In the shop, they asked if the store had any copies of the game and they said not until later in the week because they didn't order enough after pre-sales. The salesperson asked if they were also looking for a Nintendo Switch and they said they would get them both at the same time. The store clerk said that was a good choice because the games were also sold out and not available until later in the week. o_o



Our last stop before I had to gather my belongings from the hostel was Chinatown. We went into a shop that had knock-off and handmade BTS merch. They ended up buying some J-Hope inspired sunglasses.
We joked that knock-off BT21 merchandise should be called BT51 and that knock-off BTS merchandise could also go by BT5. It's brilliant, okay?

We visited a Korean beauty shop and looked at the face packs that BTS sponsors by Mediheal. They came with photocards. We each bought one. For the good skin, obviously.
The previous day, I had mentioned that I haven't explored much Korean food so Fabienne took me to their favourite Korean restaurant which was naturally closed for renovations. There was Kalbi Korean BBQ next door so we opted for that instead. It turned out to be more of an Asian fusion restaurant. There was a grill in the middle of the table and we grilled some vegetables and had different kinds of sushi, tempura, and I tried miso soup for the first time. I also tried soju for the first time. It tastes like rubbing alcohol, so now I understand why all the non-drinkers in k-dramas react like they've swallowed rubbing alcohol when their character drinks soju. (For my k-drama recommendations, go here).

I can sum up this trip by saying it was fast and slow. The weekend passed quickly, but I felt present the whole time and really enjoyed Fabienne's company. I'm used to conversing most days with 10 year olds. They can also be very interesting and have a lot of insights into the world, but the conversations are limited to their experiences and responses need to be censored for age-appropriateness. Regardless, I think it's somewhat rare to find someone who you can easily weave a conversation with, and the fact that our conversations could be as much about BTS as they were about our personal struggles in life and our thoughts on the state of the world was refreshing to me.

The decision to go was somewhat impulsive, but as RM said in the intro of O RU L8, 2?:
Nothing lasts forever
You only live once
So live your life
Not any other's lives
Take chances and never regret
Never
Never be late to do
what you wanna do
right now
Because at one point of someday
everything you did
Would be exactly what you will be
And I want to be look back and have been the kind of person that took an impulsive trip to Montreal to make a friendship.
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