Saturday, July 20, 2013

Emily almost derailed by a hyphen

When using a GPS, just like any computer, it is garbage in/garbage out. Here in France, we know words and names tend to be very specific, and the town names are very similar and one must be careful with spelling, which as we now know, includes hyphens. The other day we tried to drive to visit a new town which had seen signs for but never ventured to, Chateaurenard. We tried to enter the name into our trusty GPS, whose voice is named Emily and who rarely misses a beat in the USA or in Europe. Thus, we were perplexed when we had trouble entering the town into the system. It took us several tries to determine the problem. We were attempting to visit Chateaurenard near us, in the 13th department, while Emily was trying to send us to one 3 hours away. Ultimately, after reviewing the input, we realized that a hyphen was in our way - there was another village named Chateau-renard! So, beware the hyphen here in France, you can find yourself hours from your intended destination.

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