Carol & David's Excellent Adventures Part III - Driving to Distraction by David Braun Copyright 1998 Driving in France is a subject worthy of mention. We had a rental car for a month. After paying $8 to park overnight in the municipal lot across the street, I obtained a monthly parking pass (at that lot only) for about $100, to come and go as we please. George Carlin (I think) had a joke about New York City making all the streets one-way into Jersey to get rid of the traffic problem. Grenoble apparently took the idea seriously. To walk the two hundred meters (or less) from our home to our bank takes about ninety seconds. To drive the same trip requires about fifteen minutes and traverses well over two kilometers. It is a case of, "You just can't get there from here. You gotta go somewhere else first." All the streets downtown are one-way, in this case, the wrong way. Driving home from the bank takes under a minute. One night I was driving home from work and was forbidden by a policeman from executing a right turn where I needed to make one. The next right was similarly forbidden. I found out later that there the reason for the street closures was an unemployment march/protest. It took me twenty minutes of fits and starts, stuck in a queue of tiny cars on tiny streets before I could traverse the two hundred meters from the boulevard to the parking lot across from home. I have since learned that the French find striking a national pastime, similar to the way Americans are about filing lawsuits. Driving is a challenge even during the daylight hours. There are often no street signs at all. The ones that are there are attached to buildings and if you are lucky enough to spot one, you can't read it because the type is so small. Besides, there is so much to look out for. In this place, jaywalking is apparently a government requirement. And parking on the sidewalk has been institutionalized here. Really. You are supposed to park on the sidewalk and buy a little ticket from a machine, which you then place on your dash to keep from getting a parking ticket. Also, at a given intersection on a one way street, there might be buses coming the other way (it's only one-way for CARS, not buses and taxis and possibly bicycles) and there might be three sets of traffic lights, sometimes even four. They have lights for cars, buses, pedestrians and sometimes bicycles, or trams. The buses and trams have all sorts of interesting lights which I have yet to decipher: circles, squares, dots, minus signs, X's, and even an exclamation point, some in different colors. You had better be in the correct lane before you get to an intersection because the wrong lane might peel you off your intended route like the skin off a banana and you'll find yourself in Italy, Switzerland, or Spain before you can (legally) turn around. Then there are the traffic circles. I love them. However the sign with the constantly flashing yellow light that says, "Priorite Tram" as I enter a roundabout always causes a bit of a clench in my chest. On my way home from work one evening, I went 180 degrees around the roundabout leaving work instead of ninety degrees. I guess I was thinking about where I came from on the way in, but the way out is way different. I figured all I needed to do was take a couple of right turns and I'd be back on track. There were no right turns. I drove a couple of miles before there was even a right turn to make. And by then the road had curved even farther to the left. When I finally came out on a big street, I saw a sign to the right indicating the end of Eschirolles and the beginning of Grenoble. OK. But now I was driving along at night trying to find tiny unlit signs on the sides of buildings in the midst of the flow of rush hour traffic. Along the front range of the Rockies, you can always look for the mountains. Grenoble is surrounded by mountains. But the Bastille is brightly lit and perches above the city in one spot. Thirty minutes is not a large price for a tour of a few new roads. What a feeling of accomplishment it was to find my way again. For some reason obscured to me, the French feel that no sign warning of a construction zone should be visible above knee height. This means that when the six-lane boulevard is choked down to one lane, cars jockey from lane to lane, trying to figure out which is the wrong one to be in with nary a clue until it is too late. The warning signs are visible only as you actually pass by the obstruction. This is probably somehow related to the idea that traffic signals should be on the near side of the intersection instead of the far side. You don't tend to think about this sort of thing until you pull up to the line and all the signals disappear. Not to worry, however, because you can feel complete confidence that when the light changes to green (or even to yellow on the cross street) someone (or everyone) behind you will beep their horn. On the plus side of driving to work at HP-France, HP offers a really nice service, literally, to car owners. On Wednesdays a pair of big trucks comes and takes up several spaces in the parking lot. Inside the pair of trucks, and under the canopies they unfurl, is a total auto-shop complete with lifts. You can drive to work and drop your car off in the morning right in the parking lot for an oil change, brake job, or whatever. In the afternoon, you can pick it up right there where you work. Now THAT is service at a level unheard of in the USA. Another service-oriented idea we saw here that appears to be a no-brainer for some enterprising American entrepreneur (in the USA) is the Video Teller. They have a club you join and get a card. Using this card, you can visit a machine like an Anytime Teller and, using with your video club card, rent movies twenty-four hours a day. The movies are dispensed right out of the machine and returned in the same slot. We haven't joined yet because our French is not quite good enough to consider renting movies dubbed in French. Speaking of movies. last week, we were channel surfing and came upon an interesting phenomenon. There was a French film, "La Femme Nikita," that was later picked up by Hollywierd, who did an American re-make, "Point of No Return," starring Brigit Fonda. (One of the cable networks picked up the idea for a series, but they called it by the original name, "La Femme Nikita.") Anyway, we were watching an American re-make of a French film, dubbed into Italian, on an Italian teevee station, in France. (Editorial comment: sex, drugs, and violence seem to be entertaining just about everywhere and in any language.) But, back to the subject of this missive. taking the bus or the tram (or a taxi or bicycle) allows one access to almost double the number of lanes of travel. When you consider that a street four lanes wide often uses two for parking, one for traffic (one way) and one (the other way) for buses and taxis, you begin to see the advantage of public transport. In addition, the buses are permitted to drive on the tram tracks. In most places cars are forbidden this activity. (Although often that ban appears to have little effect.) I did see a tram the other day with a sign in each and every window saying (the equivalent of) "Student Driver." (I wonder if you have to have the license in order to get the job or vice versa.) Student drivers. there are a lot of driving schools here. The French appear at first blush to be lousy drivers by virtue of their speeds and (lack) of following distance. But, really, they KNOW how to drive because it is so difficult to get a license here. A French license, like most of Europe, is issued for life. Passing an expensive written test in French, which is intended to be difficult for natives, as well as a practical test, again in French, would be "difficult" for Americans. However, folks moving to France can exchange their valid driver's license for a French one IF the valid one is from somewhere with a reciprocal agreement with France. Such a place is just about any European country. Such a place is NOT the USA, who does not issue licenses. Such a place is NOT Colorado. Such a place IS: Illinois, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Michigan, or Kentucky. (Don't ask me why those particular states have such agreements. "Bon Jer, Bubba, I'm the Kentucky ambassador to France. Trade ya some Heaven Hill for some-a thet Beau Joe-lay.") HP recognizes all of the above and therefore sent us to Kentucky to get licenses before we moved here. The process of getting a Kentucky license can best be described in two words, "a joke." We'll let you know about the French process when it is completed. By the way, if you get to Bowling Green, check-in (literally) on our "house" for us, will ya? It's room 130 (or 13, depending on if you look at my license or Carol's) at the Holiday Inn. We're still waiting for the equivalent of our "green cards" before we can even apply for French drivers' licenses. Because it makes no sense to own a motorcycle yet because it can't be registered because it can't be insured because we don't have French drivers' licenses, and because HP is no longer footing the bill for the rental car, we take public transportation. Public transport in Grenoble is fast, efficient, comprehensive, and (relatively) cheap. Sam's school is within two minutes walk of one bus stop and five minutes walk of another on the number eight line. It is also within three minutes walk of the number thirty-two line. So, depending on where you're coming from or going to, it is rather convenient to travel by public transport. The time required to get there by bus is a bit less than by car, especially during rush hour. However it is a real "treat" to drive to his school. It takes ten minutes to reach the school building in a car from the time you first sight it, and about twenty seconds to leave. This is largely due to the fact that it is located on a dead-end one-way street. You figure it out.