As I described earlier, my roommate and myself rented a car and drove to Belgium and Luxembourg. It was a little Renault Twingo. I am sure many of you have not heard of a Renault. It is French and they have some sort of partnership or a part of Nissan or something, I'm not here to give you a car lesson. We named the car Gary and I was actually pretty happy about driving this little guy. It reminded me of the the innocence of my youth when I terrorized Hardin Country with my Geo Metro. O how I miss the days of that black beauty. You become close with a car when practically every day you have to run along side pushing your car to jump in and pop the clutch just to get her purring in the morning in the subarctic that is known as Iowa. Luckily my parents house growing up was on top of a hill, but enough of this blast from the past. We had to check out of our hotel before noon so we got down to the front desk at about 11:58. We stopped at a gas station to pick up a sandwich and something to drink for the ride. Just as we were leaving, I realized I should have taken a dump. O well, I'm sure it will be a smooth ride.... or so I thought.
Most of the journey went quite normal. We decided to avoid tolls since we got raped by them on the way so It was going to up the drive time by about an hour and half or so, but we were stingy so we were going to have to make it work. It was a much different drive home and the change of scenery was nice to get off the big highways and go through some smaller towns. Every town here I swear has a huge cathedral in the middle, so it was a pleasant drive. We started to see some industrial areas and it dawned on us that we were going to be driving through Paris. Hey its a Sunday afternoon and the French don't do much on Sundays so optimistically we thought it wasn't going to be to bad. Not going to lie, I am not a huge fan of traffic. Growing up in a town with only one stop light, you don't run into a lot of it. It wasn't so bad up to this point and I realized that the Ireland vs. France rugby match for the six nations tournament was going to be played today or was going on. Almost instantaneously, I saw bumper to bumper traffic and then the stadium where the game was being played. Shit, we were driving right by the stadium and going to hit all of the traffic. It was stop and go for what seemed like hours. We found the game on the radio and listened for a little bit. The only thing we could understand was dix sept a dix sept. The match was tied 17 all and ended up that way. It was very frustrating and in the midst of all this traffic I turned to Ryan and informed him that I had to shit three countries ago. Bumper to bumper traffic is much less enjoyable when you have a turtle head poking out. We finally got out of Paris and were running a little low on fuel so I vowed to unleash hell on the next gas station toilette I could find.
Found a gas station, but not a toilette so I was going to have to suffer a little bit more until we found a truck stop. I should have added this earlier, but a light had appeared with a wrench. Ryan pulled out the manual, that was in all French, and tried to piece together what it could mean. Obviously it couldn't be good, but we were like 4 hours from home so it had to hold up. We got through Paris and everything alright and I hadn't lashed out, punched anything, or yelled too many bad words. I have learned a couple of those in French. We were going down a big hill and started to feel the car puttering a bit. You have got to be kidding me! I didn't say anything as I didn't want to alarm the co-pilot. This is what I had trained for. Keep calm in the most adverse situations. It started happening more frequently and I turned to Ryan and asked if he was feeling that. "Yep," he said, " I didn't want to say anything." Not a moment later the gas pedal went to the floor and we were losing speed rapidly. All of a sudden all of the lights turned on and a big red light that said stop came up and we looked in the rear-view mirror and as Ryan put it, there was smoke billowing from the car. I pulled over and turned to Ryan and said, " Golly Jeepers." aOK I lied, actually it was a word with one syllable and rhymes was truck, duck, buck, suck. Ok, you get the point. This shit was serious.
We both remained calm to not freak the other person out, but we knew we were screwed. Being business majors, we are always looking at ways to cut costs without taking ethics into consideration. Were cutthroat. We downsized to the smallest eco friendly car, avoided taking tole routes, and most importantly we put the car in our other roommates name because he is a few years older than us. Both of us being under the age of 25 we would have to pay almost double. The contract and car was under the name Victor Soto. We were absolutely screwed. What was going to happen. Victor Soto was not in the car and was sitting 3 hours away in our apartment in Rennes. Nothing but the worst things were dancing vividly in our imaginations.
We found the Europcar number in the contract and called it. After a few parle vous anglais attempts we were put in touch with an English speaker. He said we needed to contact the local authorities and get it towed and call them once we got it towed so they could take care of the cost. We tried the police. No one spoke English and almost all we could say was car. Didn't help. We called the emergency number and by this point Ryan took over the reigns in speaking. He is group 3 and I am a lowly 2 so he fared better. Through much struggle, they put us in touch with a lady, from the sounds of it from across the car, was speaking in a British accent. We still don't know of how they contacted her, or if she helped them out, as she told us later she was the only person anywhere near there who spoke English. We did get some positive news though, her husband worked for the tow company. We gave our approximate location and sat in the rain for about an hour until the tow truck came and during which I reminded Ryan I still had to defecate. The tow truck driver didn't speak a lick of English, but was a very nice guy from the seems of it through hand gestures and smiles. We handed the phone back and forth between the girl and her husband. She was our saving grace, but we were in no way out of this. We got our car back to the tow shop and got in touch with the company.
Ryan dealt with the driver and his wife and I spoke to the car company. The driver also talked to the company and told them it was an engine problem and we hadn't hit anything and in no way was it an accident. It was difficult on the phone, but through a number of call backs, I was given two opportunities. We take a cab 3 hours and pay enormous amounts of money, or they would send a cab for us to take us to a hotel for the night and then put us on a train the next day. We gave the name Victor Soto and we waited for the cab.
The cab picked us up and drove for awhile and it racked up to like 100 euros before he brought us to a hotel. In broken French we asked if we needed to pay and he said no and took us to the front desk where the lady handed us a key no questions asked. Thank God, I could finally release my bowel movements. It was glorious. I think the smell lingered in that bathroom for the better part of six hours. It usually irritates you when someone says that you are your father's kid, but when it comes to stinking up a bathroom, I realize I am my father's kid. We had to wait until morning where the company would call us and give us train details. We lucked out again. The room was in Victor Soto's name, but we did not have to give any information. We got in an went out to find something to eat and actually stumbled across a spectacular cathedral. It was illuminated in the night sky and had a mote. Pretty damn cool, but sorry no picture my phone was dead. Getting back to the hotel I noticed my mother had emailed me asking how the trip was and if we made it back. My parents were in Mexico and my mom worries with the best of them. I can only imagine that woman calling the company and throwing a fit and giving it up that I am not Victor Soto, so I have kept her in the dark until she reads this. Hey mom, Surprise!
We decided to put breakfast on the room tab since we weren't paying and were able to check out no problem. A cab got us and brought us to the smallest train station I had ever been to, and we went to figure out tickets. They gave us the reservation number, so I mistakenly thought we could just print them out in a self service machine, but I was wrong. Being a small French city, no one at the train station spoke English, and I realize why should they, but it made it difficult. We gave her the reservation number that I typed on my cell phone and she punched it in and told us the amount, which was 260 euros. Not sure what she said, but I imagine it as, o wait, and noticed they were paying for it. She pulled out a huge stack of what seemed to be charge forms. Are you kidding me, we made it this far, and are going to get caught when we almost have our train tickets. This is not how I saw our plan turn into a debacle. She filled out forms and asked for my passport. O shit, this is the story of the demise of Jake Grothoff. I was surely going to be sent to Guantanamo Bay. My heart is beating out of my chest, I'm sweating, but I showed no emotion. I have never lost in a stare off/ straight face competition. I was continually tested by a kid who swears that he saw a lemur in central Iowa and has kept up this story for years so he has some determination, but have yet to be bested. Things were going smoothly as she took my information. She handed me back my passport and I started to finally get that feeling of relief. Then she did it. This lady did like an octuple take at my name and computer screen. She looked up at us with those beady little eyes and pointed her fat sausage finger at Ryan and asked his name. Now I can not be completely certain to what happened, as I may have blacked out for a moments, but I swear Ryan's voiced cracked, but said exactly what I wanted to hear. The name...Victor Soto. She seemed pleased with the answer and printed off the two tickets, one of which bore the name Victor Soto. I think we pulled this off. We had two hours to wait for the next train and chilled in the train station. Apparently I hadn't got all of the garbage out of my system and was forced to crap in a bathroom that was outside. It was a metal circle raised above a little hole. Not to mention, it was morning and was about 40 degrees if my Celsius calculations are correct. To put things in perspective, my ass was cold. It was entertaining as I lifted up my legs so I could see my aim. Pretty damn good if you were wondering. I took a picture of course so I will put it on here. Just of the toilet. Not the act. Get your head out of the the gutter. I'm not that deranged.
We had to take a train back to Paris, go across town to another station in less than an hour, and board our train back to Rennes. Luckily we have had some practice at public transportation as we both had to babysit our parents in Paris on separate occasions. We got on the train and were finally able to rest as we had made it. We lucked out on so many occasions and with the help of a little luck and identity theft we were able to make it back safely to Rennes. Of course as we left the metro station to head to our apartment there was a Europcar van sitting half a block from our apartment, but we did it. May have been the most stressful few hours in my life. I am never doing that again, plus I have unpaid speeding tickets from an earlier voyage last semester so my French driving career has concluded. Well there you have it. Two guys completely out of their element were able to keep their cool and do the unthinkable. I learned a great lesson from that. I should obviously be a bank robber. Alright that's a wrap, I got some Glee to watch. Au revoir.
Ps---> Thank you Victor for helping out and dealing with our frantic calls to you during the whole ordeal and for sitting down to memorize the story in case someone called. Thanks bud.
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