Day 17. Montreal

A day like a military operation. Where the opening offensive went horribly wrong.

Up at 0615. Express bus to Montreal at 0650. No phones, no laptop, no food or drinks allowed, just our papers and passports. Harvard clearance, check. Department of Homeland Security fee, check. Visa fee, check. Bank statements, check. Tax forms, check. NIeman letter, check. Harvard lease, check.

Quick march from the bus terminal to the US consulate for 0800 interview: a lottery slot booked after days and days and days of Internet application six weeks ago.

Shuffle to the front of the queue outside for the once-over by the security guard. Who turns us away. I have neglected to fill in the actual application form.


This is so bad that Richard could absolutely tear into me. This is so bad that I might not get another visa application slot this summer. This is so bad that we might have to go back to the US to try to get a change of visa status from within. Which might not work. This is so bad that for several minutes, we don't actually say anything at all.


I can hardly look at Richard and in fact I can still remember his expression when I do. Oh, the guilt. For a moment I think I might just throw up on the sidewalk and complete the humiliation. Tom is chattering away happily. We start walking away in a daze.


Then we snap out of it. Quick march to the Montreal tourist info centre. Quick march to an internet cafe with printer. I hustle through the application while Richard takes Tom for breakfast. I emerge with the precious piece of paper that confirms the application. Taxi!! Back to the consulate where the security guard seems to remember us and lets us through despite me now having passed my interview slot. Hustle through security. Hustle to the elevator which whisks us up 19 floors. And at last we are into immigration services.


Which is a surprisingly human experience. Which I for one really needed by now if I wasn't to cry. There's an hour of waiting. But an actual jolly and friendly agent who explains that new rules require 72 hours after the posting of the application before the visa can be issued. But rather than send me out with a flea in my ear, she gives me a slot next Tuesday, and talks me through exactly what I'm going to need. On the way out, the security guard asks me if it went all right.


So... We'll be back. It could have been much worse.


The rest of the day was crazy busy but seems something of a blur. Tom had been SO good and quiet, reading his book and drawing doodles, that we asked what he wanted to do, and the answer was a Bookshop. We bought books. We bought DVDs. We went to the interactive science museum where we all got very busy experimenting with gravity and light and animation and building blocks, despite the hordes of summer camp internees shrieking around us. We had respite from the broiling heat and nice paninis in a Vieux Montreal cafe for lunch. And a tip top supper in a Tintin themed Belgian cafe called Le Petit Moulinsart, which Richard found in our Michelin guide. Steak dijonee for Richard, Moules Mariniere for me, and salmon for Tom.


Hot dusty walk back to the bus terminal, packed bus back with late commuters across the bridge to Brossard, and exhausted to bed in our car park. I woke at 3 in the morning, started worrying about visas, started worrying about health, and promptly had a migraine, but the Maxalt nailed it, and I guess it was an appropriate end to a somewhat harrowing day.