Acts of Kindness
When we got to France, Mary got a French SIM card and local number for her phone. We bought lots of Internet data, assuming we would be using the web and email to find and book lodging along the way. When Mary ran out of data, we could "top her up" on the Orange (nee France Telecom) website. However, with data service limited and most places expecting phone calls (remember those?), she ran out of minutes, which we couldn't buy more of via the website.
We need to add minutes by buying a 14 digit voucher, calling a special number, and following a series of voice prompts in rapid garbled French. Fat chance.
We stopped into a local news stand whose proprietor, a friendly looking middle age Frenchman, spoke no English. After some agile pantomime and mild gesticulation, he figured out we wanted to buy more minutes for Mary's phone. He then proceeded to take the next 10 minutes to obtain the code, and with Mary's phone, call the magic number and set everything up for us.
Several days later, when Mary was trying to book a room over the phone, a short smartly dressed French woman we didn't know noticed our difficulty, and helped us out - making the reservations for us.
In almost every village we've been to, our fellow pilgrims, hosts, and random people we've encountered have gone out of their way to help us.
We need to add minutes by buying a 14 digit voucher, calling a special number, and following a series of voice prompts in rapid garbled French. Fat chance.
We stopped into a local news stand whose proprietor, a friendly looking middle age Frenchman, spoke no English. After some agile pantomime and mild gesticulation, he figured out we wanted to buy more minutes for Mary's phone. He then proceeded to take the next 10 minutes to obtain the code, and with Mary's phone, call the magic number and set everything up for us.
Several days later, when Mary was trying to book a room over the phone, a short smartly dressed French woman we didn't know noticed our difficulty, and helped us out - making the reservations for us.
In almost every village we've been to, our fellow pilgrims, hosts, and random people we've encountered have gone out of their way to help us.
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