How to get something repaired in France. Or, Sure, we can take cold showers in the middle of winter...

you know, i am generally not one who likes to use her blog as a forum for complaining about the difficulties of cross-cultural living. even though at times i encounter challenges or frustrations living in france, the things i love about this culture always outnumber the things that make me want to scream into my pillow. but i do want to use this blog to give you a picture of what life in france is like, and the past few days have provided the quintessential example of how things work here. so read this blog entry, not as the rantings of a frustrated foreigner, but rather as an informative story to give you a glimpse into french culture.

it all started on monday evening, when i was feeling particularly chilly and tried to turn on the radiator in the living room. but the heat never came, and upon inspection i discovered that our gas heater, that provides our apartment with heat and hot water, was not working. i found this strange, as the very same heater had just broken down and been repaired 3 months prior. i decided that i would call the company that fixed it last time. although the repair hadn't lasted 3 months, they were friendly, cheap, and quick to respond.

the next morning, tuesday, i called the heater repair company. no answer. i called again an hour later. still no answer, although the voice message said they were open all day. i called every hour all day tuesday, with no response. andrea showered at her office. (yes, she has a shower in her office. is that normal in the french workplace?) we all slept under piles of blankets wearing 3 pairs of socks each.

wednesday, i decided to give up on them, after another unanswered call. so i pulled out the pages jaunes (yellow pages) to find another company that could come fix the heater. that, of course, was no easy task:

call #1: we don't want to drive into the city center
call #2: we don't want to fix that particular brand of heater
call #3: we don't do repairs on wednesdays
call #4: we're leaving for vacation on friday and don't want to take any more work before then
call #5: we're feeling rather busy today...

this continued until literally the 9th company i called agreed to send someone to our apartment. the repairman said he'd come that afternoon. i asked him what time. he said somewhere between 2pm and 6pm. i asked him if he realized that i had a busy schedule and did he really expect me to sit at home for four hours waiting for him. ok, i didn't actually ask that, but if i had, i'm confident his answer would have been oui.

repairman showed up, fixed the heater, and charged me twice as much as i was charged 3 months before. i asked him what had gone wrong. he said it was complicated. i asked him if it was normal that it should break down every 3 months. he said yes. i asked him what i could do to fix it if it happened again. he said there was nothing i could do, i'd just have to call a repairman.

wednesday night, i took a hot bubble bath to celebrate the return of the gas.

today, thursday, i went into the kitchen to wash some dishes and discovered that the water was ice cold. that's right, the gas heater has once again broken down.

i called the repair company and finally got a hold of the man who had "fixed" my heater the day before. i explained to him that it was not fixed after all. for some reason, he did not seem all that surprised. i asked him if he could please come back today and repair it in such a way that we would not have to go through this again on friday. he said he had already left aix and did not want to drive back into town today, he would come back tomorrow.

i guess i'll take a cold shower tonight.


(for similar stories, go to megan's blog to read about the 8 month-long mold problem in her apartment. this is the real france.)