My first full day in North America. I slept very bad in the night, in part because my bed was very uncomfortable, and in part because of the jet lag – after all, Montreal is 6 hours behind Berlin.

The breakfast, of course, had to be a Canadian cliché – waffles with maple syrup.

After the breakfast, we went outside to look at the city by foot. Living in Berlin (and not very close to the center of it) I am not so used to many tall buildings being all around you – in the area where I live, there are only very few skyscrapers. So the architecture is quite impressive to visitors like me.

But it is also interesting to see how some of the “original” Montreal has been left standing between all the modern and tall buildings – not only close to the St. Lawrence river, where the original buildings are still in the majority, but also in between the  skyscrapers further away from the water, where there are still quite a number of churches.

We continued through the streets of Montreal, and I tried to capture some “street life” with my camera. The city (and I guess most of North America) seems very relaxed in terms of efficiency – take as an example the huge trucks, where the driver’s cabin takes a third of the entire truck’s size, while the truck itself only transports a single tire. And the infrastructure and vehicles are all put together in a very imprecise way that I don’t know from the countries I’ve seen so far.

After my father and I had taken some photos of the fire department in action, we went to one of the prime tourist destinations of Montreal: the Basilica Notre Dame, a very large and pretty church. I’d say it is definitely worth paying the small fee to get inside, because it is a very pretty sight.

We then went down to the port of Montreal to find something to eat for lunch, and I ended up eating a pulled pork sandwich with macaroni and cheese in a very “trendy” restaurant right at the port. I must say that it was tasty. I first heard of pulled pork less than half a yer ago during an international food festival in Graz, and since then I’ve been a big fan of it.

We then made our way back away from the port to find a subway station that would take us to our next destination, the Olympic city. On the way, we encountered more interesting architecture, churches surrounded by modern buildings and street life. Here are some impressions.

Eventually we did find a subway station that was open and were able to go to the Olympic city. I am quite useless at most types of sports (except climbing, sailing and windsurfing) so obviously I wouldn’t go there if there weren’t other things to see as well. The first “other thing” that is much more interesting than sports to me were the flags of the participants of the Olympic games in 1976 – they included the GDR (next to west Germany) and also North Korea.

In the olympic city there is the “bio dome” – which is very similar to the “Biosphere II” in Arizona, except that it is not being used for scientific purposes. What is quite nice about the bio dome in Montreal is that, unlike most similar biospheres, there are many animals in their respective biotopes. In my opinion, the “bio dome” is very well made.

And, to finish the day, we went up the olympic tower, from where we had a very good view of the entire skyline of Montreal and the city’s entire surrounding.

And with that, a very long, exciting and exhausting day in Montreal cm to an end – and I am looking forward to the upcoming days in Canada.