It's been about eight years since I've been to Quebec, and I had never been there during the winter. For some time now, I had heard about Quebec's Winter Carnival, a celebration of the winter season in which the residents celebrate the snow rather than complain about it as is customary around here. I have talked Bob, a friend from my college days who has been ice climbing the past two weeks, into joining me for the foray into this foreign-speaking land. The catch is that I have to go pick him up in New Hampshire, so the 5-hour drive becomes an eight hour drive.

Bob has never been to Quebec. It didn't take long for this fact to become apparent. After crossing the border into Canada, we took the first exit off the highway to get some munchies at a gas station/convenience store. As Bob put his purchases on the counter, the girl at the cash register smiled and spouted off a somewhat long string of sentences in French. I was wondering how Bob was going to handle this, expecting something like, "I'm sorry, I don't speak French," or "Do you speak English?" or something in a similar vein. Instead, without skipping a beat, he matter-of-factly stated, "I didn't understand a thing you just said." The girl quickly switched to somewhat broken English and told him how much his purchases cost.

Whereas Bob made no apologies for his lack of multi-lingual capabilities, I, on the other hand, have this nasty habit of trying to fit into the culture I happen to be immersed in at the moment. When in Quebec, this means exercising those long dormant brain cells that contain all those useful French phrases I learned in my high school and college French classes. So when confronted with the same French-speaking cashier situation, I am able to piece together what she is saying and offer a short, but appropriate, response in French. The problem with my attempts to fit into the culture stem from the fact that whenever you talk to someone in Quebec, they always start out speaking French, but switch to English if you respond to them in English. When I respond in French, they assume I speak French and inevitably break into a rapid-fire, run-on collection of sentences that I have no hope of deciphering. So I then have to sheepishly resort to the universally understood response of "Huh?" I never could quite break myself of this habit, no matter how many times it happened to me.

The remainder of the drive to Quebec was rather uneventful. It was rather disappointing to discover that our introduction to "Winter" carnival was going to take place in a steady rain. And although it was 32 degrees out, atmospheric conditions were such that the rain did not turn to ice, so we were fortunate in that respect. Between the rain and the heavy traffic, when we finally did arrive in the city, we were more than ready to partake in the whatever nightlife Winter Carnival had to offer. We hailed a cab at the hotel and had him take us into the heart of the city. It wouldn't be until the end of the evening, when we walked back to the hotel, that we realized that the taxi driver had taken a few liberties in getting us to our destination. The winding path he took, it turns out, ended up at a spot that was about two blocks from our hotel. Had I known at the time, I would have tried to conjure up a few of those choice swear words we managed to figure out in high school French class and offered them to our taxi driver.

But no matter, we were, at last, in the heart of Quebec city in the middle of Winter Carnival. Forget the rain, forget the traffic, forget the taxi ride - the good times were about to begin.

Little did we know we were about to learn our first lesson of this trip. Lesson 1 was that Winter Carnival has an excellent PR machine, because the hype and the reality were two entirely different things. Here it was, Friday night during the supposedly biggest celebration of the year, and you could have hit a golf ball down the middle of the street and not hit anyone with it. The place was D-E-A-D dead. It made Belfast, Maine, look like a nightlife hotspot.

And it wasn't for our lack of trying. When we did find someplace that happened to be open, we'd go inside and check it out. And, invariably, there would be a scattering of people sitting around and a hockey game playing on the TV. We settled into one such bar for awhile, and I watched a hockey game while Bob played at the video poker machine that took your money but offered nothing in return. I finally asked our bartender (in English) if there was anywhere in town that had live music, hoping that a local might lead us in the right direction. She knew of one place, drew us a map, and we were off.

By this time it was midnight. I had no idea what time the bars closed in Quebec, but we got a pretty good hint when we approached the bar and witnessed the band removing all of their equipment. Our one hope of discovering some life in this supposedly cosmopolitan city, and we were too late. We decided to enter the bar anyway, hoping to sneak a beer before last call. It turns out that the bars are open until 1 a.m., so there was plenty of time to imbibe.

It was here that we leaned lessons 2 and 3. Lesson 2 is that no place in Quebec has a cover charge to get in. They do, however, insist that you check your coat and charge you a dollar for the privilege of doing so (plus a tip to the coat check girl). I have no idea why this is, but they are very persistent - it's as if it is offensive to be wearing a jacket in a bar.

Lesson 3 is that the drinking age in Quebec is apparently 12. And even then they don't card. One look around the bar at the people who were left after the band had stopped playing, and you would have sworn you were at the Junior High sock hop. I'm no spring chicken any more, and I've been to plenty of places in Maine that cater to the college crowd and had me lamenting my lost youth, but that was nothing like what I was seeing now. I felt like a dirty-old-man just looking at the girls.

Our night ended with the two-block walk back to our hotel. At some point, the rain had turned to snow, so the "winter" was returning to Winter Carnival. This, we hoped, was a sign of good things to come.

As we made our way to our room on the 11th floor of the Quebec Hilton, a great mystery began to unfold. There, sitting in front our door, was a pair of jeans and, well, um, a pair of panties as well. Bob felt the need to bring these things into our room, and it was then we discovered that these things belonged to Amanda. We have no idea who Amanda was, but her pants and undies and driver's license were now in our possession. Unfortunately, our search for Amanda in our room proved futile. I don't want to get Amanda in any more trouble than she is already in, so I won't mention her last name, but I will let you know that according to her license she was 18 and she was from Maine. And she was somewhere in Quebec, without her pants, apparently taking full advantage of the low-to-non-existent drinking age.

The next morning, we sat down to our $14 breakfast (sure, the US dollar is worth about 30 percent more than the Canadian dollar, but they make up for it by charging 50 percent more for things) and planned our strategy for the day. We would check out the Winter Carnival activities and snow sculptures. We would wander through the downtown during the day, when things were, hopefully, open. Bob would call Amanda to see if she wanted her pants back.

The official mascot of the Winter Carnival is Bonhomme, a white, blobby thing that looks like the progeny of Bib, the Michelin Man and the Stay-puff Marshmallow Man. This guys face is anywhere and everywhere. And for some reason, plastic canes with this guys head on top are big, big sellers. It was latter that evening that I found out why. You can unscrew Bonhomme's head from the plastic cane and fill the cane up with your beverage of choice. I discovered this while watching one of the couldn't-be-more-than-16-year-olds drink from it in one of the bars.

Lesson number 4 was one learned over, and over, and over , and over again. That lesson is that the big plastic horns that people blow into to make a noise that sounds something like a moose in heat get very, very annoying after a very short amount of time. These little novelty items were even more popular than the canes. I don't think I ever even learned the French words for what I wanted to do with those things after hearing them all weekend.

The primary attraction of Winter Carnival is, in my opinion, the snow sculptures. Unfortunately, Quebec has suffered the same unseasonably warm temperatures that we have over the past few weeks, so many of the sculptures were a bit on the melted side. Some had even collapsed into indistinguishable piles of snow rubble. But there were some that did remain and were quite spectacular, as these photos will attest. They made me feel very self-conscious about the pitiful snowmen I've built over the years.

As we were walking through the grounds of the festival, it began to snow steadily. The images of people sliding down hills on rubber rafts, trying their hand at ice climbing up a man-made ice pinnacle, and riding horse-drawn carriages through the city park was refreshing to see. When snow is a fact of life, you use it for all it's worth. The people of Quebec did, and they were thoroughly enjoying it.

Downtown was a bit more lively than it was the night before, with the shops being open and lots of people milling about. The architecture of Quebec is as beautiful in the winter as it is in the summer, and the St. Lawrence is even more stunning when it's filled with ice.

The festival itself, was a lot smaller than I had expected. After all the years of reading about it, I guess it grew a bit larger than life in my mind. The highlight of this last day of the festival, according to the literature, was the parade. Lucky for us our room overlooked the parade route, so we could watch the thousands of people lined up to watch the parade shiver in the cold night air while we basked in the heated comfort of the room. Unfortunately, the thick plate glass in the windows was not thick enough to block the sound of the hundreds upon hundreds of plastic horns bellowing out their moose calls.

We decided to skip the parade and head into town for dinner. This proved to be a fortunate turn of events, for unlike the night before, once the parade was over, the downtown was awash with people. Lesson 4 - everyone in Quebec smokes. Unlike in the US, where restaurants typically offer a small smoking section and the rest of the restaurant is reserved for non-smokers, in Quebec, the non-smoking section is a few tables set adrift within the smoking section. Apparently the Canadians haven't had a Surgeon General warning them about the dangers of smoking for he last 30 years.

After dinner, Bob phoned Amanda to see if she was interested in having her pants back. She wasn't in. In fact, she was out partying, he was told. It appears Amanda had brought more than one pair of pants. To add to the mystery, there was another piece of clothing sitting outside our door. This time it was a US Postal Service knit cap. Bob decided not to bring this one into the room. It later disappeared on its own.

With the new influx of people, we had high hopes that tonight would be a lot more lively in the nightlife category. Bar 1, check the coat. A smattering of people and French disco music playing on the loudspeaker. An old man dancing by himself on the dance floor is the extent of the "entertainment." Bar 2, check the coat. A much different crowd, young kids (slightly older than the night before), dyed red hair, dreadlocks, lots of piercing. It was here that lesson 5 revealed itself. There was something different about the people here, but I didn't realize what it was until I took a good look around the bar. They were, on average, much shorter than people elsewhere. At six feet, I'm not exactly a giant, but in this strange, northern world, I felt like one.

Bar 3. No checking the coat. And no young people here. Not even close. Older people. Much older people. Boooring. Bar 4, check the coat. Small, cave-like, with a guy singing French folk songs. Too packed to move. Everyone is signing along. We understand nothing. Feeling very out-of-place, we get our coats out of hock and head back to bar 1. Check the coat again. The old man on the dance floor is gone, but the crowd is still sparse. Until Bob ventures upstairs and a second dance floor packed full of the "these-kids-can't-possibly-be-over- the-age-of-ten" crowd. All smoking. We observe for awhile, resigned to the fact that we're not going to find the perfect bar. Then we head back to the hotel to raid the mini bar of all it's snacks. The horns continue.

Sunday morning. The hotel hallway is alive with adolescent boys shouting and slamming doors. Some of them are even lucky enough to have horns. Bob calls Amanda's room. She is home, and yes, she'd like her pants back. Bob drops them off at her door, knocks, and leaves, thereby sealing the fact that the mystery will never be solved. Forget breakfast - we shower and pack and we're out of there. It's been an interesting stay in this land of short, young, smoking, horn-blowing, French-speaking people. Interesting, indeed. Crossing back over the border, Maine never looked so good. That's not to say I have anything against Quebec or it's people - they were all very friendly. I would recommend, however, that you think twice about letting your teenagers go there on their own. And if you do, check to make sure they have all their clothes when they return.

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