The hardest part about renting a car used to be getting out of the airport. The attendant would enthusiastically draw some lines on a map that devolved into meaninglessness by the time you emerged from the lot. Pretty soon, if you weren’t paying crystal clear attention after a long flight, you’d be circling back into the arrivals terminal or heading the wrong way on the frontage road.
Now we have Google Maps, and whatever you want to say about the modern age, Google Maps gets us out of strange airports and towards where you want to go. The tradeoff, of course, is that before Google Maps comes into play you have to figure out how to start the damn car. And any car that’s not yours is shrouded in mystery. There are fobs, proprietary software, strange sounds, inscrutable icons, screens, screens, more screens, and a engineers trying novel ideas that are not intuitive in any language.
I play a simple game: How long will it take me to figure out how to get the climate anywhere near room temperature. Generally I give up and accept that the air will be blasting on high or it will be off. This is where old man yelling at sky intersects with basic design analysis. In my defense, I was recently in a Lexus SUV that required all passengers trying to get out of the car to open the door handle twice. Not once, like every other car every made, but twice. It required an illustration. My friend made fun of me when I couldn’t figure it out, then he couldn’t get out of the passenger seat either. Why are we reinventing these things?!
If you’re in another country then you’re in an even more confounding situation. I’m in France and am a bit loopy after circling about 100 roundabouts—they really love those things here. I’m starting to get the hang of it. Though I’m hesitant to do the mother of all roundabouts at the Arc de Triomphe. That’s when you know you’ve graduated.
International Incident: The Reality of Driving Abroad
This car makes a curious warning sound along with an exclamation point. I don’t know what this means: Am I close to the side? Is something drastically wrong with the car? After some time it turned out that the car announces that you’re entering a speed zone. In Norway and England, among other countries, there’s an accepted icon for radar—an image of a camera. These also appear on Google Maps. Not in France. The French version is more elaborate, an illustration of a car and a motorcycle, in the midst of a few curved lines, that resemble a wifi area, but I now realize are radar waves.
How did I realize it? You can probably guess. An email from the rental car agency informed me I received a speeding ticket that they resolved for a $30 convenience charge, as was, apparently, outlined in the rental agreement, that of course I never read. I’m eagerly awaiting the ticket itself. I’m prepared for anything.
Why do we do this? Because getting on the road helps us see more of countries we love. Years ago I was in Sicily, scouting for the White Lotus location. Kidding. I was on my own exploring Taormina. I was thrashed by the local tennis pro, who was about sixteen, five sets in a row, the last four at 6-0—once the game deserts you it can be tough out there. So I decided to see some of the island. I rented the smallest car they had which turned out to have no stereo at all. I drove through the hill towns in silence, every one reputed to be in The Godfather Part II though I doubt any of them were. It was one of the great days of my life.
I flew too close to the sun because later that trip my sister and I were driving on the Amalfi Coast and I finally had a chance to overtake a lumbering car and, apparently, a scooter that was behind me was thinking the same thing. We had a minor scrape (the only car accident of my life, as it happens). Nobody was hurt, there were a few scratches that I’m sure cost a disproportionate amount, and I retired from the Italy driving game. Their trains are great anyway.
More recently I was in Scotland where the rental place didn’t have the small car I reserved, and gave me an immense Mercedes which was nobody’s idea of what to drive down uneven dirt roads. I would arrive at fishing huts next to muddy Defenders in a car that looked like it belonged to a nightclub owner. I’ll leave that there since that episode appears in my next book.
In search of fish, I also drove around Norway, which was a delight. And since I was in a Volvo it was even more of one. The roads are lovely and there are many places to pull off and enjoy the scenery. Go after August 15th, when the kids go back to school, so there are far fewer campers on the road (though still more than you’ll see anywhere outside a National Park).
Whatever the language, the impulse to get farther from the crowds endures. There’s so much tourism in the beloved cities it feels even better to get off the major roads. In the mountains, in the small towns, you make your own itinerary, it’s all waiting for intrepid drivers brave enough to navigate on their own.
A decade ago on a trip to Corfu with my wife we somehow ended up halfway up a mountain on what I had thought was a road but turned out to be a goat track. In executing a 27-point turn I managed to dislodge the rear bumper on the right side after catching it on a rock. After some frantic scouring of what little there was in the car that we could use to re-attach it I managed to get it held in place with a shoestring and number of toothpicks. The rental car agency didn't say anything when we turned it back in, so neither did I...
“Once the game deserts you it can be tough out there.” Amen, brother.