Day 6 Mon. Oct 20, 2008
This day was quite a bit more sane and allows me to reflect on 2 things I learned or relearned recently. And they maybe just as helpful to you as well.
First , of course, most know to bring plastic with you everywhere. When I traveled with my own children or the 23 times I took other people’s kids out the door, I never left home with at least 2 credit cards.
Why? Two very good reasons. You put the plastic in a hole in the wall (i.e. bank- international ATM) and get money of the right kind of currency spit out at you, AT ANY TIME of the day or night.No more waiting in bank lines, or having them potentially rip you off with one or more of the bank’s (hidden) service fees, only to count your money and find your were short of your goal by 10- like 10 Euros, or 10 Swiss Francs, or even 10 English Pounds.
And the second great advantage is exactly this “rip off” thing in reverse.
Banks (in the past, at least), waited to debit your account with the exchange that was the best FOR YOU in the month you asked for it.
For instance, this really will make a difference on this trip when the cost of gas diminished greatly in the time we were there (month of Oct. 2008) and the exchange with the Euros became progressively better for us, EACH DAY over that same month.
A large Caveat (buyer beware)
Don’t be foolish enough to “borrow” the bank’s money.
(I ALWAYS use my Debit card drawing from my own funds, not a CREDIT card.) If you use THEIR money, they will charge you from 15% to 29% for the convenience of using their funds for less than a month –(usury , if you ask me.) You will save no money this way, and have a very unpleasant surprise when all is said and done.
In the old days, there were actually banks that had very little to no charge for using their money for a month – that is, if you paid it back in full before the end of the next month. I don’t believe these magnanimous institutions still exist, and if so, they are presently in a BAIL OUT position and will charge you anything they can to try to get their balance sheet right side up again.
So, about plastic…
Use it, but be sure you are using your DEBIT card, not a credit card.
It still might be in your best interest to carry another piece of plastic – like a credit card (if you don’t have two debit cards) in case of the occasional “Gobble”.
The GOBBLE:The occasional “Gobble” has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. It is a horrific event that happens rarely but is a disaster if it occurs.
You put your precious card in the machine.
You make some human error, like forget your 4 digit PIN and have to “look it up”.
After a certain time period, the machine may spit it out and cancel your possible transaction, but it may instead “Gooble” the card up, that is NOT return it. EVER.
Alternately, human errors include putting the wrong PIN in too many times. Results? GOBBLE – no return of card. There are other stupid (on your part) scenarios, and a kid on every trip I ever took would find a new one and the machine would “GOBBLE” their card (through no fault of their own, mind you). BTW, I have NEVER had this happen to me if I didn’t do some stupid thing. It is always your fault.
There is shock and amazement when this “Gooble”ing happens. The next visceral reaction: Panic.Panicking is not going to help, and neither will, trying your PIN 4000 times, or calling someone back in the US to help you fix the mess, or yelling, or chewing the carpet or biting your neighbor ( I guess there wouldn’t be any carpet outside, but you get the picture).
Solution: You wait until the next day, and enter the bank where your card was “Gobble”d. Be sure that you bring your PASSPORT, and any other form of picture ID you might have with you. Be prepared to cry, and look pathetic.
When they finally agree to return your card, be prepared for a wait. Getting impatient with foreigners when they are returning your plastic is NEVER a good idea.
After they agree to return it, shut up, sit down, and wait. Obviously, when you get it back, don’t do the “Stupid” thing you did with the card ever again.
I now have one more Caveat about plastic of any sort.
3) Make sure it is a card with a “puce”, a tech flea, a chip, rather than a swipe card. How do you know that it has one? The “puce – flea” looks like an electronic silver spider found somewhere on the card. (See example at right)Why should you get only a “puce “card and not a swipe card when traveling in Europe? Because the swipe cards are “invalid” in many machines that are not banks. The banks want your transaction – American or not, but the gas pumps, in many, I’d say most, cases are set up now so that if you don’t want to go in to the cashier and pay, or if the cashier’s booth is “fermee” which it could be A LOT, you are SOL with your obsolete swipe card (Does your card have a black strip on the back that they pull along the credit card machine when you make a purchase? – you don’t want that black strip kind – you want the “flea – puce – spider” on your card instead.)
Your swipe card is not really obsolete as I have implied. But you are going to need a real live employee to swipe your card (instead of just put it in the gas pump machine or any other machine that takes plastic), and that need for human “swiper” will limit the number of hours you can perform tasks that involve credit /debit cards in machines.(Why do these people look happy?
Because they are not using this puce-less card in France.)
Thank the good Lord we learned this during one of our disasters that took place when a Cassière was on duty. This added necessity of human attendant’s presence saved us from making a big mistake of coming in to a gas station late at night and trying to fill up.
I know one thing, I am not leaving home with Flea-less plastic in the future.
Second thing, we actually relearned.
You should get your self acquainted with the local “canonical” hours for everything – i.e. the acceptable hours for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, when gas stations, grocery stores or stores in general are open and CLOSED.
If you think you will find people that do not respect these hours, you are in for a wait, and some hunger pangs, or the pumps “ to open”.
No one likes to wait.
Dimanche (Sunday) You've got to be kidding. Closed
We as Americans have a tendency to name call when we are inconvenienced. We call the locals stupid or country bumpkins, or antiquated. The fact is, folks, if you are the visitor, you are the one in error.
They have their culture all established, thank you, with their priorities of when to prepare meals, relax, converse, take vacations of extraordinary lengths and when to go home from work. Your anger or insistence is not going to change these “rules/ideas/constructs/ “ of their culture.If you are so put off with being inconvenienced, or not having things just like they are at home…. Stay home! You will be happier and so will the people you would have yelled at, called names, or terrified.
Along with the local hours, you should really keep track of what time it is at home.
If not, then when you call at all odd hours, either no US friend or family member will be at home, or you will have just cause them a cardiac arrest thinking that you are calling because of an emergency – you got run over, or your car was stolen, you were robbed, eloped, or you had the heart attack. They don’t think it appropriate or would appreciate it to be woken at 4 am because you got homesick and wanted to know what they had for supper last night.We relearned the hour thing today. We decided to go to Italy, but didn’t leave until we had completed some mundane tasks (washing clothes, getting the central heating to work –
50 gets a little chilly at night – your feet never get warm at 50 degrees unless placed strategically on small of mate’s back. Quite a trick in a small bed, and not smart if mate has a real heart problem.)I forgot to tell you that travel can also have some unforeseen bumps in the road that no one could have anticipated. Such as lack of central heating in an RCI exchange. Getting things like this fixed is a challenge; that is finding the right party who wants to or knows how to fix it, and finding a way to communicate the problem (if you haven’t spent nearly 40 years of your life setting you up for central heating failure or any other kind of emergency – it takes a long time to be comfortable describing well what is one’s present disaster – I am comfortable with disaster in two or three languages and can grunt and point very well in the rest of the languages.)
Patience in a crisis or in traveling in general, is more than a virtue. Patience is demanded. The French are more prompt than, say, the Spaniards or the Italians, but the French are riddled with another time-robbing value- protocol. They have (in mind), the “correct” way to do everything, correct way to eat, dress, even stand in line.
Here’s an example of French “correct” causing problems. Ted took the task of telling the staff of our RCI rental that the central heating didn’t work. He took this task because I made him, he is the “fix it” man, and because the staff demonstrated they could speak English.There was a front door and a back door to the staff office. Both doors lead to the same exact desk and the same exact person at that desk. Ted saw the woman staff member we had encountered before, so he slipped in the door and stood quietly while she took care of other guests. The woman interrupted her own conversation and told Ted he had come through the improper door. She instructed him to out by the door he entered, to go around the building and reenter by means of the “correct” door. Ted is a (quadrant 3) practical man. He saw NO sense in such a request and refused to comply. He announced that he would end up in the exact same spot and that her request was nonsense (which clearly it was!!!!) She gave him the eye roll reserved for the “You Americans” look, said “Well, I suppose since you are already here…You may stay.”
We waited until our turn came up on her “agenda” or list of the “proper” order. We were obviously pretty far down on that list, so we left Jausiers for Italy at Noon (but with our central heating fuse replaced and the unit now working.)
PISA (Italy)
We put “Pisa”, and an address in Pisa, into Halette (GPS)’s guts, but she spit out an ETA of 17h58. Pisa is a marvelous place. It has the Leaning Tower, of course, but many don’t know that there is an extraordinary Chapel there too, where you can sing and then sing harmony to yourself due to that Chapel’s unusual acoustics. There are various other historical and remarkable attractions there as well. But Pisa has one more thing – Italian food. Okay, I know, obviously, Spezia, or Florence has Italian food too – duh! But Pisa has so many outstanding restaurants with a view of those exciting breathtaking monuments, they make Italian food into SUPER Italian Cuisine and throw in some Gelati as you wander after the meal, and you have an experience hard to duplicate – anywhere.
After 30 hairpin curves, and an hour into the trip, Ted said “Did you bring the passports?”
“Now you ask me!” I said shaking my head. No passports, no Italy.
“Well,” Ted sighed, “We’ll just go to the border and take pictures of Italy from there. We’ll just imagine ourselves at a table eating anti-pasto with some linguini – the soup course next…and..”
“Maybe the Shrek 3 cat looks will work on the border guards.” I countered. “Let me do the talking, you just look pathetic.”
Obviously we have not driven in Europe between the countries in the European Union since it was established some years back. We were pleasantly surprised to find no “douane” or manning of the border. No passports were necessary. No one was there.
As we went further into Italy, I noticed the time.
We had lost some time according to Halette, not driving like the other fools on the road – 90 kph and we would have been driving on two wheels through most of the curves… so it was later than I would have liked for lunch. Maybe life is Italy has changed, but my recall was that you had to get in a restaurant before 2:30 or you would have to wait until the supermarket reopened at 3:00 to get any food.We sauntered in to a decent sized town. We stopped. But these folks announced that they were only a bar and drinking was their specialty. A restaurant could be found further down the road. The scenery where we stopped was gorgeous and so we stayed long enough to take a couple of pics and then high tailed it to the Restaurant up the road. There, as promised, was a real restaurant. My mouth was watering, ready for some… lasagna… or even pizza, anything Italian would hit the spot (and because of the “See Food” diet we have been on, the spot has enlarged immensely).
When we entered, I could see by the clock on THEIR wall that it was 2:10. “Mangare?” I made up in Fretalian. He went off on an explanation in Italian with a lot of hand gestures, many toward the clock. I tried French. Oh yes , he spoke French. After two or three words of French, he reverted back into Italian and gave me the same explanation again, with identical hand gestures as before. It looked like a deaf person in song. I might not have understood it all, but I got the essence. It was after the magic hour of 2 pm and they were closed. Come back for dinner at ____ I couldn’t make out what time he said to return.
I mumbled “I didn’t gain all this weight for nothing. I’m hungry, you, you, you, ….Italian.” Grazie, Arrivederci.The next attempt was at a pizza parlour. A tongue clicking and head shaking followed by the “2” sign (2 o’clock, don’t ya know) cinched it. You follow the hour rules or you don’t eat.
Ted was now upset because he, too, was hungry. He was also still put off by the memory of Miss Protocol, Frenchie, proper door woman, and now the wall put up to enjoying a good meal because we didn’t “Punch in” in time. Even veteran travelers can get a bit feisty when hungry.
Extraordinarily, and luckily, we did find a place that was open and ready to serve us just outside Cuneo (Coni, in French). We took their “menu” that is daily special – plat du jour at 7,5 Euros (about 9 bucks). First, we were delighted to find a place that was still open for lunch service, and second this was one of the cheapest “daily plates” that we had yet encountered, anywhere.We took their daily special, not even knowing what it was, not just because it was cheap. We were sure that had we chosen anything else – they would say they were closed. Besides eating should be an adventure, not same old, same old. It was good food with 3 anti-pastos, 2 “second” dishes and a “third” dish to boot.
It was now nearly 4 pm. If we continued to Pisa, it would be 6:30 or 7:00 and the sun might already have set.
There wouldn’t even enough time to find a good restaurant, and just admire the monuments in the distance while eating (since monuments close at 5 or 6 p.m. maybe 7 in the summer, but this is October) because it would be dark.
Then there was the idea of returning through those myriad hair pin curves in the darkness with those 90 kph racers eating your tail. We’d be getting back at the ranch at Midnight or even later.After our last couple of disastrous days, we decided to plan for success and enjoy the sun starting to set on the last of the gorgeous Alpes driving into Jausiers. We would take our time photographing sans cesse all the way home instead.
We had only one heart-stopping event while returning. A full rig – and 18 wheeler came whirling around the bend of one of those hairpin curves ending up mostly on our side of the road. He saw us in time to make a rash movement back toward his own lane. Ted, quick like a bunny, stomped on the brakes and swerved over as much as a no shoulder road allows, coming to a full stop, teetering on the gravel.The front of the truck missed us but he was so far off track that the trailer looked like it was going to flip over with his load of trees shifting in a good decapitating swing. I closed my eyes (I wasn’t driving).
“Wasn’t one bad accident enough?” With my eyes closed, I didn’t see what happened but the next thing I saw in the review mirror was the truck regaining the road. Ted and I were sitting still like two deer in the headlights.
Phewwww. Had that happened at Midnight or later with both drivers more tired, or one or the other with a couple of glasses of wine under his belt, I would probably be writing this with blood – or worse – watching someone else writing it for me.
Well, we made it home safe and sound, and we are ready to venture out there again tomorrow.
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