I received an email note a few days ago from my car rental company asking me to contact them as soon as possible. I picked up my phone with an American phone number while in France and tried to call Spain with predictably hilarious results. Finally, after a series of rejections for a wide variety of violations I got through to the agency and spoke to a guy who told me that my car needed to be exchanged for a different one. I explained that I was a few hundred miles away. His English was better than my Spanish but not by much - he relented on his request since I was so far away, assuring me that there was nothing the matter with the car, that there was some kind of internal requirement with his company.
The next day I got a f/up email asking me where in France that I was, exactly. I told them and asked what the problem was, exactly.
Well, sir, the car that I was driving had been sold and needed to be delivered to Madrid by the end of the month, a few scant days away. Madrid has to be 500 miles from my little apartment. We are now trying to figure out how to get someone from the car agency to come to St. Remy to swap my car out for a different one. And, by the way, please make sure that the tank is full of gas. I thought that was a little pushy. I explained that there is no gas station in this town - which is, technically, untrue - and told them I hope this wasn't a problem.
This is one of those situations that I would handle altogether differently if I was back at home, as in: "For this inconvenience you can stick the gas tank where the sun doesn't shine" but I'm having trouble translating this into French or Spanish or Catalan or whatever the hell language these people are speaking here. I took the opportunity to say something to an English couple who was ordering pizza at the same restaurant as me the other day because it felt so damn good to say something in English.
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