MONTREAL!

I am there.

The train arrived two hours late, blame for which can be only partially apportioned to Amtrak, since the hour or more at the Canadian customs point played a fairly significant part. There were only two of us left in the back two carriages of the train, so we couldn't understand why it took so long (though they certainly questioned me thoroughly, as if they had a chronic problem with British people trying to sneak over the border from the United States) - but apparently there were around one hundred people in the carriages forward from the snackbar (why, again, why? Why would they arrange it so that all of those people were crushed in together, while my carriage-companion (who had got on at Albany) and I were rattling around?).

So, I didn't get in to Montreal until 9 p.m., and then by the time I'd pulled my suitcase up the snowy streets (sledge runners would be more useful than wheels), found my bed and breakfast - the University Bed and Breakfast, on Rue Prince-Arthur Ouest - and got out to look for some dinner it was near ten. I had to eat in a sports-bar style burger/pizza pub. The striking thing is, though, that a pizza in such a place here tastes pretty good - all that goats cheese and olives - in a way it never would in Colorado.

Tomorrow I think I need to hike up and around Mount Royal, after all of these days of sitting on trains.

Below is the account of how I got here, written along the way. I'll add a photo or two later, when I have the energy.

Tuesday 18th December 9 am (CT) (That’s Central Time, for you non-Americans. I live in MT, Mountain Time)

I just got out of the train at Omaha and walked along the platform – so now I can add Nebraska to the states I’ve visited. From all I’ve heard (and seen from the train), a station platform is about as far as you need to go.

(Omaha, Nebraska.... I think)

I got on the train at 9:30 or so last night – it was about an hour late. I didn’t think anyone traveled by train here, but it seems that at this season they do. When I arrived in Union Station I was surprised to find it full of people with suitcases. I overheard one of the Amtrak staff telling people that as of today all of the trains are sold out. For our train, though, it seems that most of us on our own can have two seats to ourselves.

I’m in Reserved Coach, which in spite of the name doesn’t mean that you get assigned to a particular seat. At Union Station we had to line up for a desk in the middle of the hall where we traded in our tickets for boarding passes, which specify carriage number only. Then you hang around and wait to be allowed out to the platform to board, when you take any seat you can get.

The train, the California Zephyr, is one of those strange silver things you see in films. It looks like a cross between a trailer and a burger-stand from the outside, and as you come into it looks like a public toilet – one of those ones at the edges of carparks, grubby and dank smelling with functional metal appliances. It didn’t help that there didn’t seem to be any lights on. It was so dark that I missed the downstairs luggage rack and hefted my suitcase up the narrow little stairs, which were like those you get on a double-decker bus. I got a good seat by the window, though, and behind a wall so that no-one could recline their chair back onto my knees (in fact, though, there’s a lot more space than on a plane or on the standard British train – I can stretch my legs right out to a footrest in front). In the light I can now say that the décor isn’t beautiful – a kind of brown twill on the walls and the low-hanging luggage racks, blue chairs, carpet and curtains, all looking a little worn. I’m grateful that there are any trains left at all, though, so I’m not complaining.

(California Zephyr)

It wasn’t the most comfy night, but still better than plane travel. I have with me one of those neck pillows (more useful for lower back than neck, if you ask me), and a big scarf I use as a shawl when cold at work, and which turned last night into my new best friend wrapped around my shoulders, head and face both for warmth, a feeling of enclosure, and to replace the pervasive stale foot smell in my half of this carriage with its reassuring scorched cake-crust and burnt coffee smell (I sat there and thought: in the Christian tradition clothing is perceived from the outside as a covering-up, something you put on to hide your nakedness and shame – but you can think of it from the inside too, from where it can seem as much a comforting protection from the world as the walls of your house. Tortoises aren’t the only ones who carry their homes around with them). For anyone thinking of doing this kind of trip I’d also suggest that when you look at the fleece blanket on your bed and wonder if you should take it with you, the answer is that you should. In the middle of the night it was freezing, and I had to sleep under my coat.

I woke up this morning as we were pulling out of Lincoln, Nebraska. I went along to the snack bar and got coffee – which was hot and coffee-coloured, but completely without flavour – and sat in the observation lounge. Every train should have one of those – and plane too, for that matter – a carriage with big windows all along, and seats facing outwards. I got to watch the sun rise over Nebraska – a pretty white wasteland which looks nice enough if you know you’re never going to have to live there.

(Sunrise over Nebraska)

I just saw something that looked very like a group of three wild turkeys sitting amongst some trees. At least, they were very large dark birds, and I have no idea what else they could have been. The snowy countryside, growing more hilly now as we come nearer (or into?) Iowa, is nice – but the most beautiful thing so far has been the ice on the rivers and ponds, not usually a solid expanse but instead formed into numerous little raised-edge islands to look like frozen lily-pads.

(I was wrong about the hills – must have been a quirk of topography. Thank goodness for the snow, because I don’t think expanses of brown stubble would be quite so pleasant.)

11 a.m. Passing through Creston, Iowa

I presume that it was the ice storm I heard about last week that so beautifully decorated all of these trees with this fine glasswork now illuminated by the sun.

We passed a graveyard a while back that was just like all of the fields surrounding it but with a fine crop of stone tablets. I didn’t see any town, or even any building, nearby.

In the Rockies, every town seems to have a letter on a hillside standing for their college. In Iowa, you get water towers with the town name on them instead.

(Crossing the Mississippi into Illinois)

Wednesday 19th December, 8:30 p.m. (ET) Econolodge, Schenectady

The Econolodge has all the charm its name suggests – but it will be good to sleep in a horizontal position after these last two nights, and the hot shower earlier was long anticipated. It’s nice that the room isn’t moving, too, though it appears as if I still am.

Outside it is snowing. When I woke up this morning, somewhere on the edge of Indiana or coming into Pennsylvania, I found that the bright sunshine had been replaced by gloomy grey cloud. Since I complain about the sunshine continually, it’s a matter of pride that I say that this weather suits me better. In truth, though, it’s a bit of a shock to the system once you’ve been living in Colorado for a while.

From a sampling of two Amtrak journeys so far, I’d say that though there is a nominal schedule, the actuality is that the trains wander across the country and arrive sometime. At one point yesterday we were running three hours late, though I think that by the time we arrived in Chicago we’d caught up half an hour or so. Although they announced an estimated arrival time when we left Denver, they never mentioned the fact that we were late again until around 50 minutes before we arrived in Chicago. The announcements they do make are often quite strange and cryptic – like the one telling us that there would be an abbreviated lunch service “because of our arrival into Chicago” (this six or seven hours before that arrival). The train crept unbelievably slowly for most of the journey.

In Chicago I had dinner with friends, and then back to the station to get on the Lakeshore Limited. A different system for boarding was in place at this Union Station, mostly consisting of an officious woman getting annoyed at us when we didn’t sit down in the waiting room in the right place when told to do so, or if we dared to ask questions. Finally we were allowed on to the train – beginning with people travelling to New York and Syracuse (why?), then the rest of us, pointed on to carriages depending on where we said we were going. Most of the seats in the carriage I was sent into were labeled with little hand-written notes to tell us we weren’t allowed to sit there, or to say that they were for parties of two. Finally the man next to me suggested that we made a party of two, and we sat down. He was a good travelling companion, in fact – we talked for a couple of hours yesterday night, and then for much of today. He was interested in music, food, puppets, making things generally, sustainable living, and in talking about religion, politics, and all sorts of things. He was a Unitarian Universalist, and if they’re all like him I’d be happy to meet more. He was heading over from Iowa to meet his son and drive back for Christmas.

The Lakeshore Limited made me remember the California Zephyr almost with affection. It was a single level train, and the décor was distinctly less brown, but it was in poor repair and the restrooms were just HORRIBLE, if they were working at all. No observation lounge, either. To make me feel at home, though, the announcements were equally cryptic.

Sitting ahead of us was a group of three, an old couple (presumably) and a middle aged woman who seemed to be the daughter of the older woman, but perhaps not of the man. They were very interesting. I’d say New Yorkers by their accents and way of speaking, but what would I know? The two women in particular seemed only ever to complain about things and ask the others why it was so (why is it so cold? why couldn’t we get out and smoke at the last stop? why aren’t we moving?), and all three seemed to communicate almost entirely by carping and caviling at each other: “Turn that light off, won’t you? - You can reach it, can’t you? - I can’t even see it.” “Why don’t you lie down on the two seats? - How can I lie down, there isn’t room to lie down. – Why don’t you like down like I’m doing. - What the hell do you think I’m doing?” “You have the pills. – I don’t have the pills, you didn’t give me them. – I gave you the pills.” The old woman went off to the toilets, and the man and younger woman talked across the aisle, but most of it was her telling him every two minutes to look back and see where her mother was, and see if she was all right. I kept wanting to tell her to look herself (she was the one who demanded that the light be turned off, too…) and leave him be for a few minutes. There was also a group of Mennonites on the train, with their unlikely period costumes and haircuts. Negotiating the train toilets in the women’s costume would be quite a task.

Today we were just under two hours late by the time we got to Schenectady, not helped along by two lengthy delays for checks by Border Patrol. Were we crossing a border? No. But unexpectedly at Erie, Pennsylvania, and then again at Syracuse (or possibly Buffalo), New York, Border Patrol policemen came down through the carriages asking everyone “Are you a citizen?” and if we answered in the negative, demanding our I.D. We were told later that it was because we were within a hundred miles of the border. But there was never any information from Amtrak that such a thing might happen. In Chicago, at least, we’d had to show our I.D. before we got on the train anyway. Today both times there was someone in our carriage who ran into trouble – the first time an Asian man who didn’t seem to understand what they wanted, and was taken away and I don’t think ever came back, and the second time a black woman whose name they took but who was left where she was after some lengthy and condescending questioning. The whole thing was unpleasant and threatening – especially because they weren’t checking everyone’s I.D., and seemed to be expecting everyone white to say yes, and accepting it. The first time they came by I said I wasn’t a citizen, and they took a cursory look at my passport. The second time the man next to me said “Yes, I am,” and they didn’t hesitate for long enough for me to say that I wasn’t.

As for Schenectady – it doesn’t seem as bad as I was led to expect. Or perhaps it is just that, like Doncaster, it looked much better once I got some dinner inside me. I went back past the station to the old area, The Stockade, which was settled by the Dutch originally in 16-something and has a lot of nice buildings still. I found a café called The Moon and River, which I’d read about online somewhere – initially I’d found it recommended by some visitors as a better choice than the well-known vegetarian option. I actually walked past it twice because there was no-one inside except the owner who looked as if he was asleep on a chair at the back, and it seemed like a bad sign. However, the only other two places in the immediate area were a bar that sold very meaty sounding sandwiches, or a highly expensive restaurant – so I did go in, and it was the right thing to do. The owner was friendly, the place was nicely decorated, the food was tasty, and a couple of evident regulars wandered in a little later. And, contrary to the information I got online, it will open again at 9 tomorrow morning, so I will be able to go back for a good cup of coffee and something to eat before my last leg to Montreal. I had breakfast (Mexican eggs) tonight for dinner, so I said I would call in for dinner at breakfast time.

Thursday 20th December, 4 p.m.

I’m somewhere between Westport and Plattsburgh, NY. The train is running about an hour and a half late, but it is warm and comfortable and modern and very sparsely populated (so much so that I’ve just been advised to move up a carriage at the next stop since everyone left in this one is getting off at Plattsburgh), and outside is beautiful, and I’m quite content.

(Adirondack)

I’ve seen plenty of wild turkeys – and we’ve just now passed two perched in a tree. There have been a couple of deer, lots of raptors (bald eagles and others), We’ve been travelling up the side of Lake Champlain for some time now. The river we followed earlier and then the first parts of the lake were frozen across, though now it looks like the sea, and there are trees and hills and snow and dramatic rocky outcrops. And I do indeed like this grey weather better. It has atmosphere. It’s what winter looks like in my ideal image, a little magical, inviting and forbidding at once, something a little beyond control.