Huh?
It never occurred to me I'd have a choice. Thinking, or hoping, that the Renault office was in Switzerland and that the staff would speak English (because don't all Swiss speak English?) I said "Switzerland".
I should have said France.
We got wheeled into an area of the airport where all the rental car agencies were, looked around for Renault and they weren't there. No biggie. I have our nifty little eKit burner phones. More on those in some other post. In a word, they were crap.
I dial Renault, the guy that answers can hardly understand a word I am saying, and I can't understand him. There went my Swiss stereotype. I think there is something wrong with the phone, so I hang up and dial again. It wasn't any better.
We finally communicate enough for me to discover that I am in the wrong end of the terminal--this is when I know I should have answered "France" to the nice Swiss man. And it also restored what I had thought was my ruined all Swiss speak English stereotype.
I have my bike and luggage in a luggage cart, Linda is sitting in her kid wheelchair. I start pushing the whole lot towards the other end of the airport, not quite realizing what I was to expect in terms of finding the French side. I finally saw a sign pointing to the "France" terminal and, since Linda was not going to travel with me to pick up the car, we decided to park her and the luggage where we were--on the Swiss side of the terminal. I gave a quick look outside to try to get oriented for when I came back and headed off looking to rendezvous with the Renault representative.
The weird thing about the France side of the terminal is I never found what you usually see in an airport--like an arrivals/departures area. A front door, for instance. Of any kind. I finally stumbled out into a parking area and I seem to have heard something in quasi-English about meeting the Renault driver in the garage. Once there, though, I couldn't see any Renault's. Or anything that looked like it might be from the Renault office. I went back inside thinking I'd maybe missed another exit area. There wasn't anything. I called the guy again, he said meet him in the garage.
So I had to assume he meant where I'd just come from. I walked out again, didn't see anything. I walked clear out to the far end of the parking lot where it emptied out to the road. Nothing in sight. I walked all the way back to the terminal, saw a couple of guys taking a smoke break, and asked if either spoke any English. One did a little bit, so I asked him if he'd speak to the Renault guy on the phone for me. He agreed, I dialed, reached the guy again, and it turned out the car was about 50 feet from where I was standing.
The driver wasn't there because he'd gone inside to look for me thinking I'd gotten lost. If he only knew. Anyway, he came out, we shook hands, I apologized for being an idiot. I told him I'd seen the van drive in and wondered if that might have been him. Again, though, it was not a Renault. Why would a Renault rep not be driving a Renault?
OK--now we were getting somewhere.
The car pick up was routine, smooth, no troubles. A Kangoo, just like in 2010. It's perfect for a bike trip for two. Then I headed back to pick up Linda. I am not quite sure how long it had been at this point, but it was long enough that Linda surely had to be wondering where I was.
I didn't have a map--oops. I wasn't 100% confident I could get back on memory--but how hard could it me? It was an airport. Surely there must be airport signs everywhere, right?
Not really.
I did make one wrong turn, and I realized it as soon as I made it. No biggie. The Kangoo had GPS so I thought, "hey, I'll use the GPS!" I stopped, entered a search for an airport figuring that it would give me the closest one. And it did--the closest one in France. Geneva is in Switzerland. I was probably less than 5 miles from the airport but I couldn't get the GPS tell me how to reach it. The GPS had maps only for France. OK, that was out.
It was easy enough to backtrack to where I had made the wrong turn, so that is what I ended up doing. Once I did that, it was actually pretty easy getting back to the vicinity of the airport. The problem was getting back to the part of the airport where I had left Linda!
Once to a key junction--go right or go left, I chose right. Nothing looked right or familiar. Crap! I was running out of airport and I hadn't seen anything useful. I came to the end of the airport property and, luckily, was able to pretty easily make my back around to where I had started to make another approach, though each time around cost about 5 minutes. On the second attempt I chose right again because left looked like it dropped down and that was not making any sense to me. After the right, I turned into a dead-end parking lot. Had to back my way out of that and go around again. I pulled into another dead-end parking lot. Around again, pulled into some lot with a set of gas pumps.
Around again. It was time to give left a try. It dropped down, and I finally saw what looked like the front of the building where I needed to be. But how to get there? I couldn't see where to go, so I had to go around again. The 2nd time I pulled into a garage--definitely not the right place, and had to exit thinking, "great, I'm going to have to pay something for pulling into the garage." I guess because I was in the garage for such a short period of time I didn't have to pay anything. A minor relief in what was becoming a very stressful first couple of hours in Europe.
Around again. Pulled into a taxi only area, couldn't stop.
Around again, stopped, called Linda and asked what was out in front of the terminal where she was sitting in an attempt to get oriented where she might be.
Around again. I was sure I had spotted the correct building, but there was no way to pull a car to the front of it, to the curb, like you see at an arrivals terminal.
Around again, still couldn't quite see what to do. There were a bunch of buses parked out front where I was able to drive that were picking up tour groups from the airport. On my next time around I had had enough and I saw a spot large enough for me to park, I parked, and ran into the terminal and, sure enough, there was Linda. Whew!
We discovered here that it was pretty easy to move the luggage cart and Linda together by my pushing the cart with Linda simply holding onto the luggage cart. Super smooth. After what was at least an hour--long enough for Linda to start thinking about what she might have to do if I never showed up--we were at the car and loading the car up. Poor Linda was sitting in the middle of the terminal floor, in her wheelchair, holding onto the luggage cart and waiting for me to come back. For over an hour.
Little did we know, or expect, it wasn't the last time we would have the experience. It was not the greatest start to the trip, but I cannot explain how much of a relief it was when I finally found the spot I needed to be. We were running later than we wanted, but we still showed up at Lake Annecy in time for our first dinner at Les Tilleuls--steak and fries.
 |
| Les Tilleuls, St Jorioz, France |
No comments:
Post a Comment