The Twilight Zone

We left Paris and arrived at Nancy in eastern France on Friday. As is our habit and preference, we were trading houses – the couple was already in San Francisco and would be at our home in a couple of days. Francine – our trading partner – had come to Paris to give us our keys for the house and work out a few logistics.

I had googled the street we were at - “10 rue Guy Ropartz” – and had made a copy of our area of the town, copied the bus map from the Gare (train station) and was feeling on top of everything. It turned out that we didn’t even have to take the bus because our ridiculously nice friend, Judith, drove 1 ½ hours from her home to pick us up and drive us 1 mile! She (and her boyfriend, Pierre) dropped us at our lovely house in the burbs and, after a brief stay, went on their way.

And, then we entered the twilight zone.

I took my map and we walked around our neighborhood to get the lay of the land. And nothing was right. None of the streets corresponded to our map. There was no one around. Very little traffic. No stores were open (though it was a weekday and not that late.) Dorothy, I don’t think we are in Paris anymore! Do you remember that episode of the Twilight Zone where the guy was walking around the deserted town? Really, it felt like that. Very eerie.

The house was lovely, but yet somewhat strange. They left very little in the way of instructions and appliances are very different here. They had refinished the floors recently and it smelled of that. We couldn’t open the windows to air it out, though, as they were all stuck closed. We couldn’t get the lights to go off in the stairway and hall. We couldn’t get the CD or DVD or stove to go on. The toilet was running and when I tried to fix it – I broke off the float ball and water sprayed everywhere. I was able to turn off the angle stop (or, at least, the French version of it) so the water stopped but that was only a small consolation.

Did I mention that the internet (WiFi) that they promised wasn’t working and the car that they left for our use didn’t start?

They left a cat that came in and out of a very loud cat door at will, which was also jarring. And, the strangest thing of all to me was that – at 1:00 at night – kids started playing outdoors. It sounded just like an elementary school at recess. They were laughing and screaming and, well, it sounded just like an elementary school at recess. But they did this until 2:00 am. Now, we had just come from three weeks in the biggest city in France and we hardily ever heard a peep after 10:00 pm. This was very, very strange indeed.

At this point, I was absolutely convinced that I had entered another dimension.

All of the above is true, but the order of our particular problems is a bit fictionalized. We did get the internet working fairly readily after an initial frustrating period. With a little internet sleuthing, I found out that the address I googled was for “Nancy, France” but our house is actually in “Villers-le-Nancy, France” which is a suburb of Nancy. Who knew? Both, in turned out, had a “10 rue de Guy Ropartz”. I guess he was a real important guy. Thus – if our extremely nice friend, Judith, had not driven 1 ½ hours to drive us a mile, we would have taken a bus to the wrong house and had a real nightmare of our hands. So, as usual, we were really lucky. Again, thanks Judith!!

As for the house…. After a lot of pulling – we did get the windows open so we could breath. And, after waking to the kids screaming in the middle of the night, I was a bit agitated so I got up and fixed the toilet and solved the light problem. After all, dammit, I was a maintenance person and an electrician in my past. We figured out how to turn on the stove. We decided to just play CDs and DVDs on the computer. I learned how to start the car.

And, as for the silent, eerie town with everything closed? Well, it is France and August – and, well, they take the month off! Not everybody and not the full month. But, lots of stores close for 2 or 3 weeks and most people go on a vacation in late July or early August. So, it is rather empty. And, the places we walked around just happened to be full of closed stores and people on vacation – like our trading partners.

So the bottom-line now – we are well settled in our town and home and everything is just fine. It is not the twilight zone. But, the first day was a little sketchy. Sometimes, one does really feel foreign in a foreign country.