I wrote this in the back of a bus rolling down the highway, I’ll proofread when I am not bouncing all around….
t’s been a while since I was standing in the dark on a rainy morning waiting for my bus to Tours. I didn’t really have any reason to go there other than all the other places I could think of would require long layovers in podunk French towns. Once I hopped on the bus I had 6 hours to figure out what to do next. The long distance busses here have wifi. Slow and limited but enough to find a place to stay.
I have been bouncing around too much and I needed to find a place where I could settle in to get the 30 day AirBnB discount. And I was running out of time if I was to hit my Mid March return date. I don’t speak french, know anything about wine or have a taste for french food so what better chance than now to work on all three.
Plus, I am getting a bit tired of the road so settling in would give me time to just sit and do all the research I have been putting off on how I was going to proceed with the cabin build this summer, assuming the foundation hasn’t fallen over since I’ve been gone.
I combed over the available AirBnBs near the Tours town center to a point where I clicking on the same ones every few clicks without anything that met my criteria. Proper kitchen, washer/dryer, walkable neighborhood. Pretty light requirements in my opinion. I settled on a place that everything but a clothes dryer. I was going to be there long enough to hang dry anyway.
I received back the approval and was able sit back and enjoy the french countryside fly by. Looked a lot like Kansas but with a bit more style.
The bus dropped me off on the far side of the Tours train station compared to the directions I had for the apartment. It added a few hundred meters to the kilometer walk I was told to expect. Look at that, I talk metric now. Sitting on a bus all day, that walk was very welcome to get the blood moving again. It was very easy, one long street and a left and I was at the door. Finally, I was going to not get lost in some new town after dark hauling my luggage around.
The apartment was a new remodel of an old complex. Refurbished from top to bottom and wall to wall from the local IKEA.
I promised to send a note to the hosts to tell them I got past the code lock and into the apartment alright. I didn’t have a local SIM card yet thinking I would just use Wifi for all my internet. No router was showing up. This was a small complex of maybe 5 apartments so you would figure there would be something. None. I looked around and found the apartment guide. It was in French though but I I did see the word WiFi . It was proceeded by ñ’es pas and I was getting that sinking feeling that this wasn’t good. I flipped the card over and found the guide in English. Sure enough no WiFi.
I know I should have read the entire description closer but who hosts an AirBnB in a city without wifi? The AirBnB was non refundable so I went back to the train station because there was WiFi there.
So now I was scrambling to figure out what to do. My US phone still has 2 years before it can be unlocked. They offered $100 a month plan for roaming which would have cost me $200 because I would cross two bill periods plus I would have to turn on my cell service so that’s another $150. I did a search to see if there were unlocking methods that I could bypass the rule. One Company in England offered to do it for $25. So I went for that option. They came back immediately to say no problem. I just had to give them another no refundable $100 to get the actual unlock code. Given what I learned about the phone still being under contract, I was dubious. I back burnered that solution.
I do have an aging smart phone that I bought I. The Ukraine to take local SIM cards as I traveled. It worked ok in Tbilisi and Turkey. In this case, Ok is euphemistic for a slow, cumbersome piece of crap with a tiny screen but worked enough to give me a Google map.
I bought a SIM card at the train station book store, got it inserted and headed back to the apartment. It wasn’t ideal given that I was really hoping to get ahead of some planning on the cabin over the next 30 days.
It also wasn’t ideal because my accumulated vocabulary adds up to less an autistic french toddler and the TV didn’t have any English subtitled shows. The FM radio on my phone was no alternative either.
I got back and was able to stream a podcast over the cell service so I would survive. Until the next morning when I found that the phone was totally bricked. Wouldn’t turn on or even indicate it was charging.
I gave up and went to the electronics store and bought the cheapest best smart phone they had. It was cheaper than the 2 months of roaming and with my busted travel phone I was going to need one anyway.
I got it back to the apartment and was eager to fire it up. it worked pretty good and to be honest was fun setting it up to how I wanted it. I didn’t like signing my life over to the Google overlords but it’s the world we live in. And they already have everything anyway.
Given no TV, Amazon or HBO max, I am relegated to YouTube. That is when the thick french provincial block walls allow the cell signal through. When it does, it bounces between 1 bar of 4g down to 2g and down even further to whatever the E icon meant. I was expecting to hear the AOL modem noise.
So in short, I has committed to to a 14×14 room and a bedroom for 30 cold cloudy days of French winter with no TV and limited internet.
It’s not too bad. I have even figured out how to lay down on the 3 ft long IKEA sofa and take a nap every afternoon.
That’s just the way it goes and I’ll make the best of it.
Well, it looks like YouTube is blocking these video links. Maybe the of an era is upon us.
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