another lucky b*stard living in tuscany

Stefano and his impact on the Galaxy.

Yesterday I said good-bye to the Avis Ford Galaxy minivan that has played such a central role in our lives here.  (Backstory here.)

Avis America (Slogan:  We just said we try harder; we didn’t say we succeed,) had apparently responded after oh, about a week, to my desperate pleas for intercession, by reaching out to Avis Germany (Deutscheautowoistderhauptbanhofmeinherr Inc.)  Avis Germany in turn reached out to Avis Italy (Slogan:  We talk again after lunch, yes?)  

The upshot was a telephone call from Deutsche Avis that began, “Achtung, Amerikanische schweinhund!”

No.  No, it didn’t.  That was a cheap shot on my part.  Actually 4th Reich Avis was exceedingly nice.  They understood that I’d had some problems.  (Two flat tires, the impression of Stefano-the-motorino’s face on my driver’s side door, a bad wheel bearing, and the metaphysical question:  how can I return a car you don’t believe I have?)  And they understood, having it seems, been bitched out by Condoleeza Rice herself, that I’d like to dump the car without being charged 1700 Euros drop-off fee.  

No.  I’m not going to do it.  I’ve put that stupid joke to rest.

I’m not . . . No . . .  Must resist . . . must . . . 1700 Euros, or 8.3 billion dollars.  

Sorry.   

Anyway, my German Avis friend assured me that she would work everything out with Avis Italy.  But, I was not, under any circumstance to return the car before Monday at the earliest because if I did then sweet Jesus only knew what crazy baloney (mortadella) the Italians would try to pull.

We had a good laugh together at the expense of the Italians.  (An American Jew and a German laughing cozily together at the Italians. Sometimes it’s best just not to put things in historical context.)  

Anyway, I gave it an extra day, then drove the minivan to the Avis Aeroporto Firenze.  This is not my “usual” Avis.  My usual Avis is the downtown Florence Avis on Ognissanti — a car rental office which, basically, cannot be reached by car. But Germany preferred I use the airport.  My fame as “the unlucky man” had not spread to the airport Avis and they’d had no real explanation from either Germany or The US of A  as to what exactly they should do.  So I had to tell my whole tale of woe to this new guy.

And here’s why I like Italians.  He listened.  He nodded.  And he could not possibly have cared less.  German car: German problem.  He closed out the contract for the original agreed price and said, in effect, “If the Germans don’t like it, let them deal with it.”

Just like that, the minivan of doom was out of my life. 

What’s the latest?  

1) The latest is I now have my car here in Italy.  My own car.  My Toyota RAV4, successor to my late, lamented, beloved Benz S-500. (I swear to God I choke up just a little when I think of it.  And I’m guessing you want to choke a little, too.) It arrived at the port of Livorno, a city that does not make the list of Top 10 “Don’t Miss” Italian Cities.  Or the Top 100.  Although, I understand it rates second in the category of, “Dude, what’s that smell?”

It only took two days to wrestle the car from the grip of the Dogana, the Port Authority, the shipping company guy with the pregnant daughter and the anxious frown, the guys behind the windows who yell at freight forwarders, the gate security guy, the guy who thought he could get us around the line to see the guys who yell at the freight forwarders, the guy who said ‘no you cannot bypass the guys who yell at freight forwarders,’ the other shipping company guy who kept apologizing for his Fiat, the other police of some sort or another who had to stamp our documents and look put-upon, the nice guy who took pity on me and the boy as we stood wilting in the heat, and finally, last-but-not-least, the scary guy who opened the container and creeped us out.

When you drop a car off to be shipped overseas they demand you bring it in with a near-empty gas tank.  Anyone see the potential problem with this?  Anyone?  No, I didn’t think of it, either, until I realized I was driving on fumes through Livorno and faced with the horrifying prospect of running out of gas.  Actually the horrifying part was imagining the pantomime I’d have to put on to explain to some gas station attendant that I needed to take some of the gas away with me.  In my cupped hands, because I doubted my charades skills were up to the task of explaining “gas can.”  Especially since I don’t actually know the word for gas.  Although I can say, “Fill it up.”   Fill it up, I’m not going to tell you with what, that’s up to you.

2) Meanwhile, what of the Avis saga?  It continues.  Sweet Lord, it will not end.  

When last we left our intrepid, smashed-in but newly-shod Ford Galaxy Minivan (Slogan:  Like A Honda, But Crappy,) we had managed to convince German Avis (Franfurteravisgesellschatgewurtztraminerauslesemitsauerbraten Corporation) that we did in fact have the car we were in fact driving.  And Avis Italy had managed to confer with Avis Germany and conclude that someone really ought to check the bad wheel bearing before I drove the car back to Germany and had the wheel seize and fall off as we traversed one of the Alps.  

We then spent five days.  No, seriously.  Five days trying to get back in touch via il telefono to find out what the verdict was.  Finally, we got the verdict.  And the verdict was either, 1) We fix-a la machina, or 2) Maybe we fix-a la machina, or 3) Is possible they fix-a la machina, but they no say because maybe is their fault, or 4) You crazy, there’s a nothing-a wrong with la machina, you stupid American.  We are pretty sure we heard all four.  Or none of the above.  

The one thing Avis Florence was sure of was this:  if we didn’t drive the car back to Frankfurt we’d be out $2,500.  On top of whatever mystery figure the Avis computers were pulling out of their silicon asses and preparing to charge to our Amex card for the non-use of a dangerous vehicle we (theoretically) didn’t have.

Sad to say, cynicism reared its ugly head, and we decided we’d better take the car on a test drive.  You will be stunned — stunned — to learn that the chirping sound was ba-a-a-ack.  

So, I called Avis in the States.  They tried to blow me off, but I persisted.  I told my sad tale.  They said they’d get right back to me.  That was 48 hours ago.

I still have the Avis van.

I will never be rid of the Avis van.  I have to accept that.  That and a bill for 2 million Euros.

3) What of the dogs, Goofy and Pugs?  Well, Goofy’s big news is that although he has not managed to catch the pheasant cock that struts by in the morning, he has managed to locate the precise place where the pheasants did something unspeakable.  He finds the exact spot where the cock mocks him (oh, come on, we’ve all been there.  Am I right?) and rolls in something that produces a stink.  Not an immediate stink, a stealth stink that grows and matures over the course of days until every time you see the dog you’re thinking, “What is this?  Livorno?”

Meanwhile Pugs is still not dead.

4) On the professional front, today was the launch day for GONE.  Yes, it’s in bookstores now, and no, one copy is not enough.  If you want your children to grow up to be responsible, productive adults, you’re going to need 10, maybe 30 copies of GONE.  You buy the books and then you just keep throwing them at your kids until they behave.  The book is quite heavy:  it’s not like you’re trying to discipline them with a paperback.

5) Concurrent with the above, I have developed my own cyber-stalker.  Kind of cool, at one level.  You’re nobody until somebody has developed an unhealthy fantasy of destroying you.  (It’s you, isn’t it, Karl Rove?)

6) I updated my blogroll.  If you aren’t on there and you want to be, (God only knows why you’d want that,) drop me a note in the comments.  I’m a writer, not a competent adult:  you cannot count on me to figure it out by myself.

7) No.  Still no screens.  We had a screen, had it right there in our hot little hands in the check-out line at the Ipercoop (Slogan: 90 different Prosciuttos, No Baking Soda.)  It was a sort of adjustable thing, shaky, but definitely a screen.  But, alas, no price tag.  So, no screen.  Our sworn affidavits to the effect that we personally saw, and had imprinted permanently on our eager brains, the figure 14 Euros and 90 of whatever the hell those things are that aren’t quite Euros, did not carry the day.

We left the screen behind.  Torn from us . . . taken . . . too soon.

8- Fortunately, we have adapted.  We have observed and copied the clever local ways of dealing with the wanna-bake-a-pie? level of heat.  It’s easy, really.  During the worst heat of the day you close the shutters and the windows and sit in the dark.  (We like to pass the time by playing little word games.  Our favorite game is to combine the words “too” and  ”hot” with our favorite curse words, in as many permutations as possible.)

Later, in the evening, when the sun goes down and the air grows slightly cooler, you throw open your windows and invite the bugs inside.  This provides a pleasantly cool environment for all your gnats, mosquitos, centipedes, spiders, scorpions and those god-awful things with too many legs that move really, really fast and make us all scream like little girls at a Hannah Montana concert.

If you do it right you can be sweaty half the day and itch the rest.

9) Bitch, bitch, bitch, Michael.  But that was alovely meal at Antico Girone, wasn’t it? 

10) Plus, you know those machines they have just before you come into any town?  The ones that check your speed, photograph your license plate and mail you a ticket?  What are they going to do with pix of a red, white and blue North Carolina plate, First In Flight, and an Obama sticker?   Hah!

I have figured out how to add new blog links to my blogroll.  By which I mean I asked my son who rolled his eyes, muttered something about not quite believing I could be his real father, and showed me.  Again.

So, I am asking please for anyone who would like to be in the blogroll — particularly anyone with a website on a similar theme — to put something in comments below.  Seriously:  please let me know.  You’d be doing me a favor.

You seldom get a chance to ponder deep philosophical questions as a direct consequence of renting a car.  But for much of the last week I’ve had my own automotive version of the tree falling in the woods:  How can I return a car that Germans insist I do not have?  And how can I return a car the Italians think I have, but don’t?

I have a rental car from Avis in Frankfurt, Germany that I am driving in Italy.  Why a car from Frankfurt?  The reasons that are too idiotic for me to recap.  So if you care, follow this link.

The next part of the saga involves me buying two tires for Avis.  Here’s that link.

I was frankly too flummoxed to write about the fact that following the discovery of the first flat tire I discovered — two days later — a second flat tire, from a slower leak.  So in total, I bought Avis four new tires.  600 Euros.  (Which, as we know, comes to about 72,000 US dollars.)

Okay, I’m officially retiring that joke.

Next, I used the driver’s side door of the Avis car to impede the progress of a motorcyclist named Stefano.  Here’s that sad tale.

Between the second round of tires and Stefano’s misguided attempt to ram his helmet through the side of my car, I noticed a strange noise coming from the car.  It started off like a cricket.  Then it escalated to a sort of manic, amplified, Santa’s sleighbells turned up to 11 on the amp.

Over the course of the next week I determined that 1) this noise was coming from my right, rear wheel, 2) the hub was noticeably warmer than the other three, 3) it kept making the noise even when I freewheeled in neutral, and 4) the noise only occurred when I had been on the autostrada for 30 minutes or more.

I concluded it was a bad wheel bearing.  I reached this conclusion by drawing on my vast experience of listening to Car Talk and smoking cigars while waiting for my son outside his computer class on Saturday mornings back in North Carolina.

So, I called Avis in Frankfurt.  And they told me I had already turned in the car.  Given that we are talking about Germans here, you can guess that my insistence that I was actually in the car, driving the car, even as I spoke with them, failed to impress Avis in Frankfurt.

What had happened was that while I was buying the second set of tires, Avis had loaned me a replacement car — a Hyundai.  Somehow the paperwork had been screwed up.  And now I was arguing with Germany that they should empower the Italians to repair a car that Germany did not believe I had, while the meter was running on an Italian car I really didn’t have and thus couldn’t return any more than I could return the car I had but couldn’t drive to Germany because the wheel might fall off.  Not that the Germans believed I had a wheel at all.

In the meantime I checked with American Express and discovered that Avis in Frankfurt had indeed closed the contract, charging me three times the agreed price.  And then promptly reimbursed me what they had charged me . . . plus $86.00  (Or 2 and a half Euros.  Okay, now I’m really going to stop that.)

The nice man at the Avis in downtown Florence refers to me as “the unlucky man.”

At present we have managed to convince Avis in Frankfurt that we actually have their car.  Mechanics are checking the Frankfurt car to find out if I’m telling the truth about the wheel bearing.  And I now have a second loaner from Avis.

I only bore you all with this so that next week, when I’m arrested by the Carabinieri for driving a car Avis insists I did not rent, you’ll understand.

Yesterday — and especially yesternight — was a day of accomplishments. All having to do with IKEA. We spent the night sleeping in actual beds as opposed to sprawling on matteresses amid the dustbunnies and balls of dog hair.

Almost all day was spent assembling IKEA with tiny, inadequate tools. Knuckles were scraped. Instructions illustrators were cursed. Children were punished. Cruel fate was damned. But when I was all finished I had assembled:

1 Hûrnýa

2 Fåhrtløfter chairs

1 Milfbängør (bed)

1 small Strôk

1 Gristël (for the kitchen)

A complete set of Dørks

1 Spëit (my wife loves this)

I should probably stop now. But I won’t.

4 Taînts

1 Skäb ( we had a hard time picking this)

1 Bállbüstør

2 Nîmröds

1 Stübbörnstäïn (In red, not brown)

2 Drågs

1 Schøkenåu

And a six-pack of spare ümläuts

A commenter takes me to task — politely, gently — for coming to a foreign country and then whining about conditions I could easily have known about in advance.  (Lack of screens, suicidal motorcyclists.) This is a criticism I have expected.  So let me clarify my position:  if I were to drop dead tomorrow and wake up in heaven at the right hand of God, I would find something to complain about.

“Hey, angels: don’t you know any other song?  Enough with the hosannas.  Let’s hear some Winehouse.”

I have lived in or visited — and pissed and moaned about — every state in the union and much of Europe.  I hope to visit many more countries and complain about them.  I hope at some point to visit all seven continents and bitch about each in turn.  I understand fully that when I step foot on Antarctica I will find it cold.  This will in no way stop me being irritated by it.

I once spent three weeks living at the Chicago Ritz-Carlton and I had some bones to pick.  I spent several weeks living under a freeway overpass in Austin, Texas:  I had some issues.  You know that previously undiscovered tribe in the Brazilian rain forest?  I have some improvements I’d like to suggest to them.  I’m not entirely happy with their sense of style, for one thing.

Like Jesus, I come not to bring peace, but a sword.  

That’s right:  me and Jesus.  I am absolutely going there.  I mean, here’s a guy (Jesus) who is omniscient, (sort of like Google but with a smaller market cap) and knows what he’s going to find if he becomes the Son of Man, but does that stop him bitching about it?  Of course not.  Thus spake the Lord:  What is with you people and the money-changing?  You don’t have banks?  And, Here’s a thought:  how about you all stop behaving like assholes? and the famous, Would it kill you people to take a shower? I mean, Me Almighty, Galilean fishermen wearing wool in August?   You can’t buy enough frankincense to cover that stink.

Complaining is a sacred right enshrined in the Constitution of the United States.  We the people of the United States, having had it up to here with this monarchy bullshit . . .  It is a basic human right.  Without complaints no improvement is possible.  Every single worthwhile thing that has ever been accomplished since the dawn of time has been done in response to whining, bitching, criticizing and nagging.  Is it just me or is this meat cold?  Is there some reason we can’t invent fire?  Is a nice medium rare too much to ask?

There isn’t a lack of window screenage in Tuscany because screens are a bad idea.  There’s a lack of window screens in Tuscany because people thought, “Oh well, what can we do?  Let’s just have another glass of wine and not worry about it.”  If people had started complaining about mosquitos in their homes twenty years ago, you know what?  We’d have screens.  And I’d have to find something else to pick at.

1) In Tuscany the temperatures can rise into the low hundreds Fahrenheit.  (To convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius merely multiply by pi carried to fourteen digits, divide the result by your shoe size and subtract the number of Snow White’s dwarves whose names you can easily recall.)  

2) In Tuscany there is no air conditioning. 

3) In Tuscany there are mosquitos.

Open windows and flying insects.  The solution is obvious to anyone of the American tribe, particularly to anyone from the south.  But here’s a fun fact about Tuscany:  there are no screens.

No.  I’m not making that up.  Yes, there are bugs, yes it is hot, no there is no air conditioning and yet no, no, no, there are no screens.

People:  screens.  We’re not talking about particle physics.  We’re not in the realm of advanced mathematics.  No fissile material will be required.  Screens, for God’s sake.  A fine mesh made of aluminum or nylon and stretched over the window in such a way that it allows the free movement of air but does not allow mosquitoes, flies, crickets, gnats, centipedes, wasps or that weird-ass bug we saw the other night that we’ve all decided to pretend doesn’t really exist. 

Seriously.  I can handle the way the lights in restaurant restrooms suddenly switch off in mid-pee.  I get that the use of clothes dryers is some kind of eco-crime.  I understand that if I install an air conditioner I am condemning the entire human race to drown in the rising sea brought on by the melting of the ice caps oh woe, oh woe, it’s the end of the world as we know it.  But screens?  Screens?  How do screens hurt anyone?

Bugs.  Open windows.  Screens.  

Damn.

The casa.  Not the one on top of the hill, that’s a modest little castle belonging to the Marchese di Frescobaldi.  We’re down and to the left, the beige stone buildings.  Us, our lovely landlords Jane and Gianpiero, and a woman we haven’t met who is rumored to be a British MP.  If you’re in the market for a Tuscan rehab that second building off to the right a few hundred meters is a beautiful place — courtyard, watchtower, barn.  

At night the fireflies are so numerous you forget the stars.

Don’t look at me!  I said, don’t look at meee!

Did you imagine that you could silence me forever, Reynolds/Grant?  Did you think my voice would be stilled?  This small, clear voice barking in the wilderness?  Did you imagine that no one would learn what you have done to me? 

Well I will be heard as I was before!  Arr! Arr! Arr! Arr! Aroooo! 

Hear me now, and believe me world:  Giant Shoes kidnapped me.  He kidnapped me and drugged me and humiliated me in ways that no dog should ever have to experience.  

It began when I was tricked into believing we were going for a ride in the car.  Yes, I was tricked.  Me!  I know it seems impossible.  I’m hardly naive.  I’m certainly no one’s fool.  But I fell for it.  ”We’re going for a ride in the car!” That’s what I was promised. A ride in the car!

Little did I know that this “ride” would never end.  

What happened next I can barely stand to relate.  I was . . . there’s no other word for it, I was stuffed.  Stuffed!  Into a cat bag.  I couldn’t stand up.  I couldn’t move around.  I couldn’t spread my masterful scent.  Then my bag was loaded onto a devilish device with wheels and I was carted through the airport.   My so-called owner allowed me to push my head out of the bag but was it so that I might breathe?  No!  No!  You underestimate his perfidy.  You fail to see his exquisite sadism.

You see, I was laughed at.

To recall it even now, weeks later, fills me with pain and shame.  Laughed at.  Pointed at.  Snickered at. But in a sad way I was almost grateful for the laughter because those cruel, sneering voices revealed to me the full depths of my humiliation.

“That’s a dog in a baby carriage!” a little girl cried out.  ”A dog in a stroller!”

It was his revenge upon me, you see.  I had evaded his attempts to leave me stranded (or worse) and now he was paying me back in the coin of cruelty.  

What did I do?  I endured with what dignity I could manage.  I comforted myself with the thought that I would pay him back with howls of truth, howls of fury that would so enrage the passengers on the plane that they would rise up as one and throw my tormentor off the plane.

But once again, I had underestimated my opponent.  He enticed me with Beggin’ Strips, knowing that I cannot resist them.  I took it to be a gesture of contrition.  He fed me from his own hands, you see.  He gave me Beggin’ Strips!  How could I have guessed what he was really doing?

At first I did not understand what was happening to me.  I felt strangely at peace as he lifted me off the stroller and bumped me down the aisle of the plane.  I felt like a puppy.  I felt . . . But something was not right.  My reason warned me that this feeling of warmth and calm was unnatural.  Unreal.  

And then, he shoved me under the seat.  

I pause here so that you can grasp the enormity of the injustice.  A non-entity like Giant Shoes shoving me under a seat.  Me!  In a bag.  A cat bag.  Under the seat.  And here, gentle reader, is the truth that I can barely bring myself to acknowledge:  I could not howl.  I.  Could.  Not.  Howl.

And then, he spoke, and I learned the terrible truth.  ”The pig is actually quiet.  That Valium’s working.”

Is there a dry eye reading these words?  Then you have a heart of stone.  Tricked.  Kidnapped.  Stuffed.  Shoved. And drugged.

I can write no more now.  My heart is too heavy.  The time will come when I can speak of what came next: the Lufthansa animal lounge.  The death drive through Germany and Switzerland.  The imprisonment with strange dogs in a strange land.  

It is a tale of pain.  But, I promise, a tale of triumph, too.  And though sweet revenge is not yet mine, it is coming.  I promise you that.  It is coming. . .

Answering the question, “Do all those daring, zippy motorino drivers weaving in and out of traffic with three centimeter tolerances all around ever miss?”

So, Lady — the Garmin GPS unit that guides us with its stern female voice — is insisting yet again that I drive straight through Florence rather than take the A1 to the A11.  So, I’m pulling a “U.”  But it’s not really a “U” because there’s some kind of factory entrance I’ll pull into.  I’m at a red light, preparing to go left, turn signal on.  The light changes, there’s no on-coming traffic and I crank a left and wham.  Excuse me:  WHAM!

A Honda motorcycle slash scooter (motto: we’re not quite as gay as a Vespa) smacks my driver’s side door.

And down goes Frazier.  Kids are okay, Katherine is okay, so I pile out and discover to my great relief that the guy — Stefano — is okay aside from a scrape on his elbow and a certain understandable pallor.  I get his bike out of the road and get my car likewise and we have introductions.  ”Mi chiamo MIchael, piacere.”  Pleased to meet you.  We’re of course very solicitous, very worried.  We use our bottled water to wash his scrape.  We offer Band-Aids.  We offer Advil.  

It’s an unexpected callback to the post from the other day.  Americans — if we don’t kill you, you’re invited to the barbecue.

So we exchange info and call the cops, who are mellow about the whole deal.  Here’s the interesting thing:  no one called the cops until Stefano did, and I think he did it at my insistence.  Something like that happens in the states and out comes every cell phone and fingers punch 911 in unison.  Here, no.  And no one pulled over to try and help.  A guy from the factory came over and told us to get out of the way of the gate.  

On the other hand, Stefano told me and then the cops that it was his fault.  It was all honest and civilized and straightforward.  Meanwhile, I’m filling out the accident report and taking care to note that I was making a legal turn, that I waited until the light had turned green, that I then proceeded safely . . .  The American paranoia over lawsuits runs deep.  

Then it occurred to me that had Stefano hurt himself badly he’d have nevertheless received medical care.  Medical care that did not bankrupt him.  And that did not force him into the arms of lawyers who would search for ways to make me and my insurance company pay. If he missed work because of those injuries he’d keep his job. There was no chance, in short, that having had his head bashed in by an American making a perfectly legal turn Stefano would be impoverished, thrown out on the street and end up living in a shelter with crazy people.

A fairly common occurrence — a traffic accident — that in the US can be the start of a downward spiral through overcrowded public hospitals, lawyer’s conference rooms, bankruptcy court and the Salvation Army, was handled in a brisk, rational, businesslike and friendly way.  So maybe that’s why no one was calling 911.  Maybe it wasn’t quite the emergency it would have been in the States.

Of course I still have to get insurance to pay for the door.