First a disclaimer, the picture at the top is from our archives, we both forgot to take any photos today. As you can tell we have moved on from Migennes. Amazon came thru as promised and delivered the power cord for Greta Garmin, so we are now able to once again navigate in Europe.
Today was planned as a logistics day. We wanted to go to one of the two Costco’s in France to stock up with food for the trip. After that we planned to go to a cellular phone store to get a cell phone with a French number so that we can call locally if we need to.
I was a little worried about Costco as it is on the outskirts of Paris, and well traffic in Paris is famous for not being friendly for tourists. I don’t know if we were lucky or the Costco is far enough out in the suburbs, but the traffic was pretty reasonable and we arrived about 2 hours after we left Migennes. The next two hours were spent in shopping bliss as we bought enough stuff to fill all of the cabinets in François and the refrigerator also. We should have enough food to last weeks, but we will probably have to swing thru a German grocery store to pick up some favorites in the next couple of days. The Costco is an interesting combination of staples from the US, and really interesting local products but on a Costco scale. We bought a few old favorites, and a bunch of interesting European food.
I picked a campground that was about an hour from Costco in the general direction of Germany. When we arrived it was in a very small town in the middle of the country. The app I use for picking where to stay at night said that it had a 160 spots. When we rolled in they were mostly occupied by permanent looking trailers, but there were a few spots for transit RV’s like us.
The owner/manager showed us down a road to 5 or 6 unoccupied spots, I asked Electric? in my best French accent (Electrique?), she hit me with a blast of French and pointed towards the back of the spot, jumped on her bike and rode off. We parked François and I headed to the back of the spot where I found the strangest and most dilapidated looking electric box I have seen in Europe (or North America for that matter). Thinking it must be abandoned I went poking around for a newer one, but ended back at the strange box. Crossing my fingers I cleared the cobwebs away and plugged in, and went to check. The bad news was that of course it didn’t work, the good news is it didn’t short out François’ electrical system. There were a few unmarked buttons on the box so I pushed them randomly, but this did not deliver any electricity. I then went and looked at the other spots to see if there was anything more promising, but they all had the same box. I even threw the power cord over some bushes to try one of the other boxes, but no joy. So back up front to talk to the owner/manger, I again got a very animated and lengthy explanation in French, all of the time with a nice smile, but I was no more wise about the electrical situation, than when I walked up there. Thinking that my inability to speak French in France was my problem not hers I decided to trudge back to our site to see if I could figure out some options, one of which was giving up on electricity for the night.
While I was up having my unproductive walk, Ton had joined in the hunt for a suitable electrical box. When I returned she pointed at a box across from where we were parked, and told me to try that one. I had looked at it earlier and to my eye it didn’t look any more promising than the three I had already tried and told her so. Ton than decided that we would go up one more time to talk to the manager/owner. This time Ton asked the question and received the same enthusiastic answer in French. I looked at her and asked if she understood, and of course she didn’t.(Despite having a degree in French from the finest University in Thailand, but that is another story.) But Ton then asked if she could show us, and the lady said sure, so off the three of us set. As we walked back down to François I kept apologizing but she told me it was no problem (I think, but whatever she said she said it nicely). When we got to François she pointed at the same spot Ton had earlier told me to try, which made Ton very happy. We now have electricity.
We never did get the cell phone plan, but that is another story of failure on my part that can go untold.