I seemed to study well at school, but I was indifferent to geography. I remember that they started teaching that subject from the 4th class. Horror seized me when I went up to the geographical map — I could find nothing there, complete disorientation. The teacher would say: “Take the pointer and show on the map where the Volga flows into?” My feeling from a geographical map at that time: a heap of winding many-coloured lines, and among those “threads”-lines one had to find the Volga…. 🙀 So, something pulled me back into childhood. Well, you understood that I remained not very strong in geography, and I had a chance to display my illiteracy on the trip.
Having said goodbye to Baden-Baden and driven onto the motorway, my husband casually said: “well, a couple more nights in France and we’ll enter Spain.” …. “What? France too!? Well I never! He surprised me, he really surprised me! I had completely forgotten about France, that it borders Germany!” I think to myself, so many girls and women dream of getting to France, taking a photo at the Eiffel Tower or standing next to it, and here my kind wonderful husband Vanya is taking me to France, and I am almost indignant and surprised, the road is long and unknown. Well then, forward, to France!
And when we crossed the border I suddenly exclaimed (I did not expect that of myself): “O France! — homeland of Fantômas!” Then I asked my husband whether he knew Fantômas — the hero of the film of the same name, whether he remembered it from his childhood. It turns out yes, he remembers, and his papa had a Citroën of the same model as Fantômas’s.
While we were remembering, French radio came on, and how surprised I was when I heard an interview with the beauty Mylène Demongeot, who played the blonde, and without knowing French I feel that she is remembering all those already gone to the other world who played in that film. I try to tell my husband about such an amazing coincidence — I remembered Fantômas and here is an interview on the radio! Vanya has a Nordic character, he did not show particular emotion.
All right, we continue our way, the sun is shining brightly, in the distance blue mountains appeared, I saw a sign for Grenoble. I remembered that in some year the Olympic Games were held in Grenoble. My husband said that our first-priority task was to get there and get our bearings as to where to charge the Tesla. As they say, “GPS to our aid!” We drive. And then GPS “tells” us that it is time to leave the main road. We turned right onto a picturesque quiet road, even unpaved. We pass mountains on one side, fields on the other, almost no houses to be seen, we drive on a dirt road, no charging station in sight either. We drive, we are silent. Already maize fields appeared, no charging station. I glance with one eye at the computer screen, and the “battery” divisions are fewer and fewer, and then I thought “probably we’ll be left to live in these fields, we’ll sleep in the Tesla” … and the battery already shows 18 km, and my husband is silent and “dust curls from under the wheels” … m-yes. In Norwegian that is called a “situasjon” (situation). I was nervous, of course, but kept quiet.
At last an exit onto the motorway appeared, and so hope appeared of making it to a Supercharge station. Almost a happy ending. Yes indeed! We found it, arrived, charged. During daytime charging of the car we each time chose a hotel for the night on the internet. Of course we looked at prices and at the location of the hotel, and also whether there was a pool, to swim, precisely to swim, to “stretch” the spine after long sitting. We found one. We book and pay at once. We drive…
