Death Car

We’ve had incredible luck with our cars on this trip until Romania. The Opel Corsa did us good in Estonia and Latvia and the Volkswagen Polo somehow managed to carry five Anglos from corner to corner with very little effort. The story here, however, is quite different. First, we paid nearly twice as much per day for a Dacia Logan. If you’re thinking to yourself, “what the heck is a Dacia?” that’s because you have never and will never EVER purchase one. It is Romania’s national car company and the Logan represents 50% of sales not because it’s “that good” but because it’s “that cheap.” At $36 a day it was by far the best deal we could find, though if I had known it may mean the end of me, I might have splurged for something NOT awful.

Lets start with the radio. One hour into our journey it just stops working for no reason at all. Mind you, this is a road trip and no music means listening to the sound of the exhausted motor as we crawl up and down winding roads. This leads us to plugging a mini speaker into my iPod and setting it in the cup holder. While it’s barely loud enough to hear, it’s better than nothing. The radio does come back to life at random moments but within ten minutes it begins its slow and depressing death once more, flickering on and off, in and out until all noise fades away completely like an engine running out of gas.



Romanian drivers are THE WORST. They dart out into the road, pass on blind turns and have no sense of personal space. As such, a horn would be wildly useful. At one moment a man driving a horse-drawn carriage leapt into oncoming traffic using a whip and his middle finger. I went to blast the horn only to find that there is, in fact, no horn on the steering wheel. Instead, the button in on the blinker bar., meaning you have to simultaneously hold on to the steering wheel at 10 and 2 while reaching around with your pinky finger to “show em’ who’s boss..” Good one Dacia. Good one.

The windows were fogging intermittently because it was cold outside and hot inside but also because the car is a piece of crap. I went to turn on the AC only to discover that the button is, in fact, permanently wedged in the “on” position. Thankfully (I guess) that’s where we wanted it).

Do you want to back up? Well, pay attention. Reverse is where 6th gear should be and there is no 6th gear.

How about inclement weather, like the snow storm we came across in the depths of a Transylvanian night? Switchback roads, half-working headlights, a broken fog lamp and a snow storm. Things you need: windshield wipers and wiper fluid to keep the windshield clear. Things we don’t have: wiper blades and wiper fluid. That meant a horrific screeching sound as the metal rods glided spastically from floor to side. Floor to side. Screech! Screech! Slam! Screech! Screech! Slam! I pull the “trigger” to spray some washer fluid. Nothing. I try again. Nothing. We pull into a service station to buy the necessary items as I curse the mafia-esque man who rented us this piece of [expletive] car.

I chalk up my survival to paranoia, fear and sheer luck. Next time, I want something NOT made in a former Communist country.

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Kyle Taylor

Coastal Adventures Part Three: Pajama Party In The Car

It started as this notion of adventure - sleeping in the car on the sand, windows down with the sound of crashing waves wooing us into dreamland. While there was some wooing, it was related more closely to fending off hypothermia. We pulled into yet another beach around 10pm and parked ourselves just in front of a camper which turned out to be the traveling home of a weary French couple who were seriously confused by our car escapade. It all began warm enough - two people, tiny car, lots of body-generated heat. We did a slideshow of the day’s pictures on the computer, had a late-night snack of nutella smeared on bread, slipped into some sweatpants, cracked the windows for ventilation, reclined and began the dozing off process. While it wasn’t the most ideal of sleeping situations, there a certain sense of “if I can sleep in an Opel on the beach in Portugal then I can do anything” that kept me feeling rather brave about my misguided choice. Meanwhile, Zeynep was buried in my silk sleep sack from Vietnam literally from head to toe. She looked like a big blue caterpillar.


Two hours later we were frozen solid. Zeynep woke up first, pawing around for the key with the hope of starting the engine and cranking the heater. Sadly, without compressing the brake you can’t start the car. A few more attempts at turning the engine over and I arose from my slumber. The only problem was, I couldn’t feel my legs due to the numbness that had set in from the frigid conditions inside. “Oh my god, it’s too cold. I need the heater NOW,” she told me. I stomped on the brake, she turned and we cranked up the heat. “Can we just let it run all night,” she asked me. In my half-asleep stupor I attempted to think about her request but for whatever reason - maybe the impending hypothermia, maybe my grogginess, maybe the Dengue fever from a year and a half ago, I couldn’t seem to put it all together.


I could make out the gas gauge though, and it was in the red, the little “gas” light blinking in my face. Why, might you ask, was the gauge on empty? Because the car rental place operates on a “leave empty, return empty” policy to “save money.” Me being too cheap for my own good (literally, at this point), I refused to fill it past a quarter tank at any moment, wanting to roll back into Lagos on fumes and make my Dad proud. Now here we were, freezing in a car on the beach and unable to heat ourselves up because I was waging a personal war with a scandalous car rental company. “How about 30 minutes for now? That should be good,” I suggested, not an ounce of authority in my voice. “Okay,” Zeynep uttered, reluctantly.

And so we laid there in silence, dozing in and out while the car heater slowly brought our frozen limbs back to life. I woke up almost thirty minutes later to the second, now sweating profusely in my three layers of clothes. It felt good. I turned the key and all fell silent again. Let the re-freezing process begin. Zeynep, the weather, our little Opel and I repeated this process every two hours on the dot for the rest of the night, hitting 2am, 4am and 6am sharp before finally rising to natural heat around 8am: Zeynep waked up, fumbles for key. Pokes me. I press the brake pedal. Heater rumbles to power. De-freezing begins. Thirty minutes later I wake up sweating. Turn key. All is silent again.






While it wasn’t ideal, we both woke up oddly rested, a picturesque panorama of pristine ocean and seaside cliffs out the window. Was it worth it? Absolutely. If for nothing else, something to blog about.

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Kyle Taylor

I live in China! Wait, I mean England

Six days in and I’m already half-way through my traditional start-of-semester nervous breakdown, which usually includes a few frantic nights, one all-out crying fit and a major break-out that takes me right back to the 7th grade. School is, as expected, overwhelming. My top-choice course isn’t be offered, which has left me wandering aimlessly from optional to optional, trying to find something that at least partly touches on my interest area (fortunately, I think I found it today in “Critical Issues of Media, Communication & Development). Tack on an education system entirely different than ours in the US (read: fragmented, discombobulated and slightly illogical)and you’ve got a pretty good picture of my mental state.


Naturally, nothing has gone quite as planned and that’s usually at no fault to me. Since my last name begins with T and ends with aylor, it might seem fitting. At the same time, I thought that moving to England would be a whole lot easier than moving to China. How wrong I was. Here in the UK, bureaucracy and “the system” reign supreme. If the computer doesn’t say it, it can’t be done. If you don’t have this certain, specific form that is exactly like this other certain specific form except for the color of the stamp and the weight of the paper, then it can’t be done. And finally, if the system doesn’t support “interactivity,” then you simply cannot log on. EVER. I’d like to quickly highlight three anecdotes where I was almost certain that I was either in China or on a hidden camera show.


The first came just after my Mom and I had arrived in London after a short stint with the Belgian host fam. We had reserved a car with Sixt and I had “started” the reservation at 1pm, though I imagined we could pick the car up at any time. Wrong. Because of the Chunnel fire, my Mom and I arrived to London 3 hours early. Rather than lolli-gaggle, we went straight to the rental place. I handed over my information and the woman handed it right back to me. “This reservation is starting at 1pm. You are too early.” I explained the situation. Nothing she could do. I asked if the car was there. “Yes, but doesn’t matter. Your reservation is starting at 1pm. The computer won’t let me give to you the car until 1pm.” By now my head is spinning. The car is there, no one else wants it and we’re ready to go. I end up on the phone with “Customer Service” (and I use that term lightly), who says the only way to get the car is to the cancel the current reservation and make a new one. I would, however, have to pay the full price of the original reservation as well as for the new one. Um, no. 30 minutes have passed and there is officially NOTHING that can be done because the “computer says no.” So what do we do? We sit in the lobby for 3 hours and wait. Promptly at 1pm I go back to the counter and the woman acts as if she has never seen me before. Brilliant. We then proceeded to get lost in London for two hours, thanks to a lack of street signs and a local population that apparently doesn’t know how to get around either.


The second incident occurred when trying to open a bank account. Now on my sixth attempt, I brought what I was told I needed. There is, of course, no reception, so you have to wait 40 minutes to see someone before you can be told that you’ve got the wrong forms. This time, I have the wrong “stamp” on the right form. Apparently this is also the ONLY PLACE in England that I can open an account as an LSE student, even though I am not getting the benefits of a student account. Why? Because “that’s the way the system processes the input sets.” So I head off to get the right stamp, but first I have to print another copy of the form.


This leads into the third incident. I head to the library to use one of the 10 million computers. I enter my login info and receive this error message: “This system does not support interactivity.” A few more tries and the same thing, so I go to the IT help desk and explain my situation. “Wow, we’ve never heard of that one before. Sorry mate.” I decide to try the Student “Services” Center to see if they can just print then stamp the form. Once again no reception, so I have to wait twenty minutes to find out they can’t help me. “Sorry, the system doesn’t allow us to print student information.”

So there it is. One week and one very powerful, ethereal, all-knowing, creepy “system.” The tiers of bureaucracy reach the same level as those in China, only here they’re inside a computer, which makes them even less “real.” Back for round 37 tomorrow…
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Kyle Taylor