Note to Self: It Hertz When U R Lost :(
Once we got to Avignon, i knew I would want a GPS unit in the car -- the little village where K-li was going to stay and study painting was supposed to be a *really* tiny village -- it was located right up in the top corner on page 305 of my Rand McNally map of Southern France -- and my French amie Corinne told me that just knowing it was near "Villars, France" was like saying it was in the town of "Springfield" in the USA -- every town in France had a "Villars." So I really wanted a GPS unit. No problem, the woman behind the desk told me at Hertz, whose nametag said her name was "Val" -- although her colleague's name was "Valerie" which made me wonder if everyone had some sort of variation of the name as well -- Villars/Valerie/Val...part of the area was known as the "Var" as well -- what was up with that? Some sort of Scrabble in a blender thing. One of the things that eroded my confidence in Val from Villars was after she brought out GPS in a Bag, I told her that she hadn't returned my contract to her and she insisted that she had, and after I went through my papers and decided I definitely did NOT have it and went inside the Hertz building AGAIN, I found it sitting on the counter. Valerie (part deux) gave me a strange look as I picked it up and left, as if I was stealing something =8^o. I just acted like an American who regularly walked into buildings, snatched paperwork off counters, and left without giving a shit.
I had upgraded to a Peugeot that was supposed to have a GPS built in, but once we got into it, we realized there was no GPS unit in it, so when I went back into the Hertz building, they gave me a bag-o-GPS (ominously named "NeverLost") and sent me on my way. We plugged it into the 12-volt unit and once we were out of the city limits the thing immediately crapped out, saying it was out of batteries and why didn't we plug it in? Whaaaat?
We did find the general area of Villars and drove around for quite some time with Keighley slapping the GPS unit around and it complaining of being tired, wanting batteries, wanting to be plugged in (although it WAS plugged in), and leading us down unpaved one-lane roads for awhile before we finally went back to the town and went to a restaurant where we could a) eat something (amazing fish soup), b) ask the very nice waitress (*not* named Valerie/Var/Val -- her name was Nadine) if she could recharge my now-dead phone -- in the restaurant kitchen) and c) use the restroom and d) wait out the now-pouring rainstorm while we e) hoped to hear back from people we were supposed to rendezvous with that we had texted and left messages for. And eventually we did, now a) full of soup and b) with a recharged phone and c) having used the facilities and d) after the rain and e) the crappy cell service resolved and everything was fine and the place K-li was staying was great and all was well. And I even stayed a couple of days until she was settled until...oh CRAP how was I going to find my way back to that Hertz rent-a-bag-o-GPS?
I called Hertz to tell Val-o-drone that they'd rented me a dead unit and her solution was for me to bring it back. Really? I said. How? I'm an hour away and how do I even find you? She suggested I try recharging the unit in someone else's car, which I did. Six hours after charging, I turned the unit on, asked the GPS unit to plot a course back to the Hertz station in Avignon, at which point it had a little nervous breakdown and started sobbing about how tired it was, and how it was going to sleep, and blacked out.
Shit.
I called Hertz back and told them I was not paying for this piece of crap (in nicer terms than that, but that was the gist of it). But now what? I had to catch an 8:06 train back from Avignon to Paris in a couple of days, and then from Paris to Amsterdam, and then Amsterdam to Arnhem. I had tickets for all these trains. And the train station was in the middle of nowhere.
Meanwhile, two ladies on the trip Keighley was participating in had gone to St-Remy before showing up in Villars and been robbed while they were painting on the side of the road. They lost passports, cash, wallets, everything. Someone else on the trip was waiting for a lost suitcase. How could I even sing the blues about a GPS unit? In fact, why was I so retarded about finding my way? Why couldn't I read a map? I couldn't find a train station? I took out my map and tried to plot a course. What did people do before technology? I mean, how hard could it be? I decided I would just get up early and set out to find the place, more than a little embarrassed that I was so freaked out about something as basic as retracing my steps back to a train station.
Well...you would think I had never travelled before that morning. I drove like a little old lady expecting to be roadkill by every passing motorist and squinted at every sign, expecting to miss my exit. When I got to Avignon, I tried every possibility on the roundabout. Let's try this one....no, that goes into the city limits and that's wrong. Go back to the roundabout -- try that one...! No, that goes to the industrial center. (I am now an expert on all the possibilities of the roundabouts in Avignon btw.) Finally, after exhausting ALL of the possibilities, the sun came up, and I went into the shopping center where a security guard gave me directions. And I finally made it to the @%^&* M-Fing train station (which is NOT marked on any @#$%* signs, I might add) at 8:06 am, just in time to miss the @#$#% train by exactly one minute.
I must say...not my finest hour. Parked the car practically on top of a rock and threw the keys in Val/Valerie's face (who wanted to know if I had filled up the tank?) and ran with my bags, huffing and puffing and sweating JUST in time to miss the train, and then CRIED and went into the ticket station to buy another ticket sniffling...snot running unchecked (I cringe just thinking about this, although the guy selling tickets looked like he saw it every day and couldn't care less)...."Monsier....le prochain....?" and then, after paying for for another ticket....sitting down in defeat and digging through my luggage because I didn't have any tissues and nothing was even open to sell any coffee where I could have snagged a napkin -- I had to blow my nose on a dirty sock :-P
I went back to Hertz to see if I could get any break on the return, although Val/Valerie/Vamoose Sucker, Because Hey, We Already Took Your Money told me they would refund the GPS but nothing else, and I realized, Why am I arguing with this French woman? Hertz is an American company. I'll take it up with them later.
When I told Nicky about it later, I told her I wasn't going to mention the sock in the letter to Hertz she said she would definitely leave it in, that it had to be worth at least fifty quid LOL.
When I finally got to Paris and tried to get another ticket to Amsterdam and Arnhem, the (much nicer) guy at the ticket counter told me that there were no more tickets that day, and I realized that good old Hertz and their (ha ha) "Neverlost" system had stranded me in Paris for a day, that I wasn't going anywhere. But at least I knew my way around Paris, and I wasn't going to cry into my socks.
However, as much as I love Paris, dragging all my luggage out of Gare du Lyon into the hot sun to find a place to stay unexpectedly, with no plan, is not my favorite thing :-P