She Drives Me Crazy

Last week, the inevitable finally happened. After three-and-a-half months, Amy and I pulled into Paris, and thereupon had to return “Cleo,” the Renault Clio. As you likely know by now, we picked up a brand-new 2014 Renault Clio in the end of June, and have been traveling throughout Europe in this rental, which we named “Cleo,” because we’re two creative people who clearly aren’t as creative as we think.

It had really been a love-hate relationship with Cleo. We loved that we had a car. We loved that we had the freedom to go anywhere, on our own schedule, and that we didn’t have to take taxis or metros to trains or busses, and that we didn’t have to haul our bags everywhere to do so. And that the prices were comparable.

But we hated the constant search for parking, which can be difficult in Europe, and the expenses that came with it. And while it helped a great deal, I came to hate our GPS, who we named “Emma,” because it has the voice of an erudite English woman and sounded like Emma Thompson. This damn thing sent us the wrong way up one-way streets, it put us on the wrong road, it told us to drive on sidewalks, and once it told us to take a sharp right turn, off the road, and INTO THE SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN. Sometimes there were no roads at all.

This wouldn’t have been such a big deal if Emma shut up once in a while. The GPS, as I once mentioned, would tell you to “keep going straight”, and “in one kilometer, stay on the road…” Then, “in 500 meters…in 100 meters…go straight.” I can figure that out, you dopey GPS – just tell me when to make a turn or exit. It drove me crazy:

“In 100 meters, go straight.”
“SHUT UP, EMMA!”
(Amy): “You know the GPS can’t hear you, right?”
“SHE HEARS ME!”
“The car hears you?”
“She hears me, and TAUNTS me!!”
(Emma): “Go straight.”
“SEE??!!!”

That said, Emma was the best thing about our drive to Luxembourg. It always attempted to say place names with a local accent, which is terribly funny: listening to a robot GPS with an English accent trying to speak French. It didn’t work so well this time. At every turn, Emma would say something like, “turn left on to the N2, towards Luxembourg,” but the pronunciation was more like “towards LUX-OMM-BOO.” I got a big kick out of that. For the two days we were there, I kept asking Amy questions:

“So, what do you think about Luxommboo?”
“What sights should we see in Luxommboo?”
“ARE there any sights in Luxommboo?”
“You know what’s kind of a boring place? Luxommboo.”
“Did you know that Luxommboo has the second highest GDP in the world, behind Qatar?”
“Did you know that Luxommboo is ruled by a Duke, and is therefore a ‘Duchy?’”
“Would you like to pass Luxommboo on the left-hand side?”

(A side note about Luxommboo: it’s not so bad, just a little less interesting than other places we’d been. And who goes to Luxommboo? Well, we did. And while we were there, I ate this:

It’s called a “Triiiple Bernaise” burger. Sounds great! Tastes…meh.)

The GPS was also the cause of the only accident we had with Cleo, the Renault Clio. Emma the GPS sent us up a very, very narrow street in Opatija, Croatia, and it turned out to be a dead end. With little room to navigate, I backed into a small driveway to do a tight three-point turn, and when I pulled back into the street, the front right fender hit a low stone wall. This was the result:

Fortunately we were fully insured as part of the deal. And last week, when we returned the car, all I had to do was hand in the keys, with the rental guy saying, “No problems with the scratch, it’s all covered.” We were out of there in less than five minutes. And that was that, it was easier than returning a video to Blockbuster (back when there were videos, and Blockbusters). No more Cleo, the Renault Clio. No more Emma the GPS. No more driving through Europe. It was all over.

One of the things we’ll miss about the driving in Europe is just how clean and beautiful it is. Unlike major highways in the US, these roads have absolutely no billboards, and just about zero trash. Like almost none for miles. While in the USA you’ll see rusty Schlitz cans and plastic Walmart bags and various piles of fast-food crap on the side of the road, there’s almost nothing on the side of the highways in continental Europe except for cows, sheep, and grass, and maybe one random piece of trash every few miles, which is usually an old blown-out tire. Urban areas are different, of course, but the highways were great.

There is something you WILL see roadside throughout Europe: windmills and solar panels. And not the typical windmills that Cervantes wrote about, but massive wind farms on mountains throughout the developed countries of the EU. If you’re on the road for more than a half-hour, you’re bound to see a dozen massive windmills in the distance, off on some hill, spinning slowly. And in the plains, you’ll see huge solar panel farms that stretch for acres. It’s amazing – they take this open land in the middle of nowhere, and they make the most of it. They’re farming energy instead of corn syrup.

Here are some questions for you (none about Luxommboo): Do you enjoy tailgating? Do you like getting cut off? Do you like when people switch lanes erratically without signaling? Then you will LOVE driving in Europe! Here’s a quick breakdown of the different driving styles we found in various countries:

SPAIN – strict adherence to the “passing lane” policy. If you’re in the right lane, someone will come up on your ass, within five feet, tailgate you for a few seconds, and then pass you at whatever speed. Then, the SECOND they pass you, they will immediately cut back into the right lane, nearly cutting you off, to get back into the slower lane. Often with no indicators. The left lane is a passing lane. STAY RIGHT!!!

ITALY – There’s a laissez-faire attitude to driving here. Seemingly no standard speeds, everyone just doing their own thing – weaving in and out of lanes, straddling lane lines, breaking for no apparent reason, and parking on the shoulder smoking a cigarette. But beware high-performance Italian cars. They will sneak up on you at death-defying speeds, and zip by like a flash of lightning, with some bad techno music blasting out the window.

CROATIA – just like in the USA, people drive standard highway speeds with wild cards here and there. But on smaller roads, you’ll be stranded in a line of cars behind a flatbed truck carrying haybales for hundreds of miles, slowly leap-frogging Yugos in the passing zones until you finally get some open road, only to find yourself stuck again behind a tractor towing some horse manure, driven by a mustachioed old woman in a babushka, who’s smoking a pipe.

MONTENEGRO – no highways here, just two-lane roads. Again, you’ll get stuck behind a truck or tractor, but this time, the local drivers will pass you and another five cars at a time, on a blind curve, into on-coming traffic, making it a very tight three-lane road at times, with you saying out loud every three minutes, “JEEE-ZUS CHRIST! That was CLOSE!!”

AUSTRIA/GERMANY – Incredibly fast, but incredibly civilized. Go whatever speed you want on the Autobahn, passing cars like a blur of color, particularly if you’re a young man seeing just how fast your orange Volkswagen Golf will go. If you’re going faster, the guy in front of you will get out of the way. And if you’re going slower, please move over for the person behind you. Sometimes you have to wait, and so you do. But there’s no anger, and no road rage – just an understanding that we all share the road. And when there’s construction, obey those road signs rigidly, because after all, this is Germany.

And the rest stops! Oh, they’re awesome! It’s a combination of gas station, restaurant, and souvenir stand. In the USA, you’ll drive for hour after hour, fill up, and keep going, refreshed with a little beef jerky, a Hostess Sno-Ball, and a Gatorade. But here, they’ve got nice sit-down restaurants at the rest area, so you can take a nice break and eat a good meal, not some “quick-serve” junk. In Spain, the stores sell a wide variety of Spanish red wines and jamon. In France, there’s more wine, foie gras, and fresh baguettes. In Italy, a bunch of chianti. And in Germany, there’s all kinds of beer, and schnapps. Yep – they’re selling booze at all the highway rest areas. That seems about as sensible to me as giving out shots of castor oil before you get on the tilt-a-whirl.

Then there were the radio stations. We had some favorites along the way. In Germany, we listened to Top 40 hits on “Antenne Bayern.” In France, we liked “Nostalgie,” an oldies station. And in Spain, by far our favorite was “Rock FM,” which is the closest thing to a classic rock station. But there was one problem with Rock FM. You may remember all the drives we took from our hotel outside of Pamplona into the city itself, back when we ran with the bulls? We did that drive about five times, up and back. And of those ten legs, we heard “Cum On Feel the Noize” like nine times, both the Slade and Quiet Riot versions. You have no idea how much “noize” I felt. I felt so much noize, and, as a boy, was rocked by so many girls, that the feeling and rocking was too much to take. I have no explanation…I guess the Spanish like to get wild, and they like to get wild six times, consecutively.

And lastly, getting back to our old friend Cleo, the Renault Clio… Cleo was French, and had French license plates. As such, people on the roads thought we were French. With this ambiguity, we were free to stain the reputation of the French people as much as we needed to. So whenever there was any kind of disagreement on the road, any honking, gesticulating, or any other perceived injustice, Amy gave the other driver what she called “The French Salute.” It consisted of one specific finger, pointing skyward, strikingly similar to the Eiffel Tower.

But Cleo, the Renault Clio, I salute you. Au Revoir.