28 Jan

The highlight of my week was failing, once again, to get a car.

That’s my third attempt so far.

It’s a 2-hour round trip by train and foot to get to the Super U that does long term car rentals.

The first time, was really only a scouting mission, as I knew I didn’t have the right paperwork yet. But, when I arrived to find out how it all worked, the staff who worked the car department was on a lunch break for the next hour. Not wanting to wait around in a supermarket all day, I went to catch the next train home. Which was also in an hour. Waiting for the hourly public transport is the main reason I yearn for a car.

A few weeks later, with the requisite paperwork acquired from Canada, I returned. (Not during the lunch hour)

So far in France, French people’s English has been excellent. Which is helpful because my french is still mostly useless. I’ve started watching a new TV show called “L’Agence” to see if it helps. It’s a reality show about a luxury Parisian Estate Agents, which is entirely family run. The husband and wife founders, and their four sons. There’s also an old single grandmother who pops in every day for lunch. All their properties range from $4 to $15 million. They’re even selling a castle with a throne as a toilet. Most of the time they speak too fast for me to learn anything, but I have picked up one phrase from the clients:

“C’est dingue!” (It’s crazy!)

Anyway, the point I’m meant to be making is that the car rental staff were about as good at English as I am at French.

I’ve now learned that the minute you get more than 15 minutes drive away from Chamonix, the English skills drop sharply. Outside of the tourist hub, you’re simply in rural France, where English has little value. This totally makes sense of course. After all, I wouldn’t expect anyone in Shropshire* to know French. But it still came as a surprise after the fluency of everyone else I’ve met so far in the last 6 months.

Eventually, with a few failed attempts at using Google’s speech translation, a few successful text translations, myself, and three different Super U staff managed to come to an understanding:

They couldn’t rent me a car on the spot, but if I could come back the following Wednesday, with all the right documents, we’d be good to go.

So I did.

One week later, I sat back down at their desk, keen to collect my car.

This time I brought my iPad for some advanced language translation capabilities.

They gathered all my documents, and asked me which kind of car I would like to rent.

Then, they told me they couldn’t rent me a car today because the woman who approved all the rentals was on holiday. So, please come back on Tuesday next week.

So, I put it in the diary to return on Tuesday and try one last time.

Fourth times a charm?

Non non non!