French driving

There is a hall/meeting place between my French school and our apartment. On my way home I noticed that there was a lot of activity around the hall - big busses and lots of security. Must be having a concert or something… I thought.

After dinner, we often walk over to the patisserie (one of the few that stays open late at night) and we get a treat. We walk down the busy street that goes in front of the apartment. This street is 3 car lanes and a bike lane – all one way – in the direction of the rivers. As we were traveling in that same direction, a car pulled to the curb into the bike lane on their right (near us) and a young girl called out, “Excusez-moi”. We went over to the car and she asked if we knew how to get to the Bosche (this hall place). Paul immediately said, “oui”.

Giving someone directions... hmm. I chuckled to myself and stood back to see how this would play out….. I wondered if he could actually explain to her how to get to this place since she had just passed up the other one way street that would take her directly there. It was not only a test of Paul’s French, but also a test of his traffic maneuvering. The first thing he told them was the name of the street that they SHOULD have taken (which was one block behind them). I quickly pitched in and pointed to the street that they missed. So as Paul was explaining how to get to the hall from the ‘back’ way, their light turned green…. (they were in the rightmost lane….remember) and they raced ahead of the traffic to take a left hand turn from the rightmost bike lane, across 3 lanes of cars! Horns started blaring… people started yelling…. and I sure hope they made it to their destination safely. Seeing that sort of thing is pretty common… and that’s why I haven’t yet once driven our new car.