I feel like I could have written a book about what an expat should know about Belgium when moving to Brussels — I would have called it
“You want to be a Belgian resident? Ha ha ha ha”.
A similar guide should be created for Montreal, with chapters like:
- Canada and its inferiority complex with its neighbor to the south
- How to live in -30 temperatures and still look fabulous
- Un char = a car and other fun quebecois phrases
- Everyone lied to you — Montreal is not Europe.
- Your kids will have to go to a french-speaking school. Even if they don’t speak any french. You can take it to court but it won’t do you any good.
- Transportation – Montreal rocks.
That last chapter describes my feelings about Montreal and transportation in general. It is not the best city for public transport, but it has:
- wide sidewalks for pedestrians (everyone walks alot here)
- a decent underground metro
- good service on buses (at least in my neighborhood)
- plenty of bike lanes
- Bixi – the bike sharing service
- and communauto, the car sharing service.
We recently joined communauto, and have really really liked it. It is simple, it is easy, it is relatively cheap (don’t have to pay for gas and car maintenance, which is nice in a city like this, where potholes and arctic temperatures create high maintenance cars). There are plenty of car pick ups spots, and one is near our house, and we’ve never had an issue with availability.
I give it a big thumbs up.
