“Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference; that is, so long as both parties speak one language.” - Moby Dick Chapter 55: The Gam
Even before I landed in Montreal for a three day visit, I knew I was going to Melk. It had been recommended to me in most earnest terms by a Canadian friend. He was so insistent that I go that I thought he might put both hands on my shoulders, the better to make his point, as he landed the words with me. You have to go to Melk.
A jostle of hipsters, finance types and poets spilled out the door and some way down the street. I found myself tossed amid a babble of French and English as the queue negotiated its way through the cafe and the ordering process. Waiting in the hubbub for my coffee, I heard one exchange writhe and slip comfortably back and forth from English to French four times. A thrill to be somewhere so deeply bilingual.
Montreal - in my brief and unlettered visit - seems to sit on fault lines between cultures and geographies. Anglophone and francophone communities meet on this island. I heard concerns over dinner that in one or two generations, French will no longer be spoken. If I were to drive 20 minutes in one direction, I was told, I would hear no French and 20 minutes in the other no English. The old port hunkers alongside the slab-sided glass of downtown and the curated wildness of Mount Royal Park. Or Parc du Mont-Royal.
Melk somehow contains and represents all this.
