Aside from the two horrendously loud female English speaking employees that just sat down next to me complaining to each other that their boss is "out to get everyone" because she caught them smoking up, the atmosphere is great. A couple across from me sharing a pizza Méditerranée, eating it with fork and knife with strewn about napkins on the table soaking up the mess the Sparkling Lemonade made when it overflowed as the woman attempted to sweeten it with brown sugar. A woman with dark hair down the isle eating a Quiche Épinard while sipping a Pellegrino wears a fabulously bold black and white horizontally striped top with a bright orange scarf; an outfit only a frenchwoman could pull off. Meanwhile, out by the other café down the isle there is another fabulously styled Frenchwoman strongly resembling Doris, both in style and character, cackling with friends about the 'insane' amount of sweets on display by the cash register.
The contrast between here and Winnipeg Airport (or the Prairies and French Canada), could not be stronger. I left Winnipeg surrounded by an overwhelming number of overweight people wearing outdated ill-fitting mom jeans combined with too tight sweaters and hoodies barely coming down to their belt line, with faded white worn sneakers, and landed in an atmosphere infused with style and a certain freshness, a boldness maybe. It's incroyable that these places are both still in Canada, no? If I didn't know any better, I would swear I had landed in a paralel universe Canada, where everyone is still very friendly and amicable but still has a very strong French European infusion, where there was never any anglo-saxon takeover which spawned a nation of fast-food eating, giant truck driving, American-British hybrids. Oh wait... I actually am. I think Québec may be the best of both worlds. I think I may have to figure out a way to live here when I one day move back to Canada.
On another note, I went to bed last night on Canadian time and woke up on European time. What time is that you might ask? 2am. So these last 3 paragraphs may very well not make the best of sense, or not truly reflect what I'm trying to impart here. However, it also means I get to go to sleep on European time, which is shortly after my flight leaves in 3h30 hours, or 6pm SK time. We had to wake up that early to leave and make the 4 hour drive from Redvers to Winnipeg to make my morning flight, which surprisingly, considering the god-forsaken hour at which we rose, what actually a really pleasant drive. The only complaint I would have was the Tim Hortons in Brandon, in which the staff's immense desire not to be there led them to not make us breakfast sandwiches, even though it was 10 minutes to 5, when they apparently start serving them, and turn us down, making us wait another 2 hours to Winnipeg to finally eat breakfast. But other than that, and my bag apparently weighing 70lbs, meaning I will probably have to go through and get rid of some more stuff to be able to better travel with it (or lift it), YET AGAIN (Swear to god I've cut my stuff in half 3 times already, and anyone who knows me knows I don't have that much stuff to begin with!), the first 10 hours of my 38 hour trip to Hannover, Germany have been excellent. Now there is just to pray to the plane gods that I can fall asleep on my flight to Amsterdam.
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