We began our trip to the self described lovely countryside from the Paris Air BnB. Here’s the setup. I did the hub turn Barcelona to Paris and had a 2 hour nap then went straight to the airport in Barcelona for the Air France ride back to Paris. Grabbed an hour sleep on that ride so I skipped the nap and wanted to get to the next place before sunset.
Fully packed with the all important address in the google maps we set out. At the first gas stop we found 2 large jugs of Adblue so we were able to remove the “YOUR ENGINE WONT START SOON!” warning and we continued. Beautiful, long, and somewhat ominous sunset as we were so close. Then the fun begins.
As we circle a tiny road rotary circle in downtown Terrasson the GPS lady calmly says “you’ve arrived at your destination” ….Not! So where is the real destination?, you ask. Well, we have an email that says in Frenglish, (I summarize) If coming from Terrasson drive towards Brive and take a right on ablonan. You’ll see a picnic table on the left and a mirrored turn after that and we are the house behind the trees…
A few clicks out of the circle and on the road towards Brive, we decide to stop at a gas station for a dog grass and to call the owner to clear up directions. 😂 Owner answers and speaks as much English as I speak French…none. I bring the phone in and hand to a customer and gesture something like “what the F is this guy saying”. The 2 Frenchies commence a verbal ping-pong match”…oui,…Oui..Oui?..Oui..” Finally the check out lady grabs the phone and sorts out the directions, even draws a map with “MickeyyDoDos” (McDonalds) on it for reference.
A few dark roads later and we arrive at said picnic table and mirrored turn. We pull in and I get out to find the “house behind the trees”. A creepy, drunk French guy appears out of the darkness mumbling “sorry” and explaining he knows every language on the planet except English. He offers German, portugese, Italian, Spanish..etc. I don’t hear Taglog, Russian, or Chinglish as an offering so I decide charades would be our most common. I point to the van and charade to him “I want to unpack my shiz, park the van, have a beer and sleep”. Lost in translation he takes my charade to mean, “Please show me in painful detail how every appliance in your house works, and can I have some hugs”. We finally unpack and rid ourselves of chatty French handsy guy. In the haste to unload and park, I was offered an “okay to park here for the night” spot. It was a tight parallel and it become semi stuck in the grass against a stonewall on the back. Figured I’d move it in the morning when people needed to go to work.
4 hours later… We awake to blaring series of long car horns. Clearly someone is angry. I assume I’m about to fight with 2 or 3 angry, drunk Frenchies. I hoping there are really drunk so I don’t take too many shots. I can’t find my shoes so I show up to the below freezing event in black socks, hopefully looking tougher that way. What I find is a very angry lady driving who has 2 kids in car seats in the back. Its a 3v1 scenario but the kids can’t get out of the seats themselves so I should be good. She angrily points at my van and yells some french stuff. Not sure but probably, “I’ve been on the road forever with these two kids and I just wanna get home and your F*(kn van is in the way”. I reply, “You speak English?” She screams, NO…maybe him, little” and points to the passenger side. I bend over and basically see a happy fellow with a little French hat and a goatee. He proudly and slowly says in his best English as he points up the street past the van, “That is where I live..” I almost reply, “No shiz, Sherlock” but decide he won’t get the Sherlock reference, probably not even the “no shiz” part either. Charades it is. I charade to him that my van’s front tires are spinning in the grass, and ask if he will help me push it as my leopard skin pajama’ed wife drives. He looks confused but on que my lovely, leopard print pajama’ed arrives with the van keys and he fully understands. He yells something in French to his wife which seems to have been, “Get out of the car and help us push!” My lovely wife drives off the icy grass like a champ then backs into the grass, clearing the road. The angry lady quickly jumps in the driver’s seat and throws gravel as she nearly runs me over. French goatee guy is left behind to walk up the hill and he shakes his head in disapproval of his designated driver’s exit. I consider offering a beer or asking for a selfie but settle on some mutual “Mercis” and head back to my “French villa in the countryside” with my lovely leopard print wife. -Woodman
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The house was actually really cute and they even delivered breakfast to our door in the morning!
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