La Voiture Est Poubelle

La voiture est poubelle. La voiture est merde.

The car is garbage. The car is shit.

This is French that even I can understand with perfect clarity and comprehension.

In the midst of preparing for and running the Medoc Marathon this past week, I was also - courtesy of Europcar and what I hope was a well-meaning friend - saddled with one of the worst rental cars of all time. And at a cost that I still choke over every time I think about it...

One of our party made a unilateral decision that five people couldn't possibly fit in one vehicle - especially for four days - and hence rented two vehicles. So when I got off the TGV train in Bordeaux I was handed a set of car keys, a two week rental contract that I could neither cancel nor modify and a hefty bill...

Voila! I was in possesion of an antiquated Renault Laguna. This is the same vehicle that had not been serviced, where the dashlights flashed like the neon lights along the Las Vegas Strip and that made the most ominous of sounds even when you drove it at legal speeds. This is the same vehicle that shed a tire - and then promptly shredded it - so that I was forced to change a tire in Saharan conditions. The "Pneu" sensor of course did not work...

I was apoplectic and in danger of having a stroke.

Sophie - our lovely and multi-talented Host - intervened and introduced me to her friend who ran a tire shop on the day before the Medoc Marathon. When he and his mechanic looked at the car, and then looked at the dash, they both burst out laughing...

"La voiture est poubelle. La voiture est merde."

The car is garbage. The car is shit.

Cost of a new tire? Three hundred and fifty dollars.

MERDE! SHIT!

Well, we'll just have to worry about it after the marathon. In the meantime I prayed that the car would not continue down its path of self-destruction...

Monday morning Sophie got on the phone and began a long series of phone calls while I paced the farmhouse like my best friend was in major surgery and not expected to survive. We thought it would be possible to change cars locally. So we went to the local Europcar agency location...

Ce n'est pas possible! It's not possible! Il fait fou? Are you crazy! The lady at Europcar did however burst into laughter in much the same way as the local mechanics had. "That car is nearly dead! Did they give you that!?"

Yes, yes, as a matter of fact they did. The keys in my hand kind of give credence to that theory. Sophie knew the local Eurocar lady and they engaged in a blur of language I could not even begin to follow. But if I was the Renault Laguna I am sure I would have been blushing and deeply ashamed as Sophie described my every shortcoming and failure as a rental car...

But there was no way I was getting a new car locally. Instead, I was directed to the Europcar location at the Bordeaux Airport - ninety minutes down the road. But the car could not be collected until the late afternon. So there was no choice but to take Sophie to lunch as a small token for the amazing way she looked after us all week. The lunch was fabulous.

In fairness to Europcar in the end I did get a new Renault Laguna that looked to be of a much more recent vintage. Although the same car in name, the two vehicles didn't bear the slightest resemblance to each other. And I didn't have to pay for the shredded tire.

And the man behind the Europcar counter when he saw the first car that Europcar had so kindly rented me at an exorbitant rate?

He burst out laughing...