Recently, a friend and I drove to Switzerland for a seminar.  When we were discussing transportation options, we found that it would be much faster and cost roughly the same to drive rather than take the train.  It's way, we could also make random stops for coffee, stretch our legs, or just to take a picture of this giant chicken statue. My friend has a GPS in her car, so we felt pretty confident that we'd gave to and from the conference without a problem. Little did we know...

It's hour 3 of our trip, and the sat. nav. has been good to us. We should be getting to our seminar within an hour, and we've been on back roads for a little while.  I know that we're definitely in the mountains, and naturally there is enough snow to make Buddy the Elf feel right at home.  As we're driving though, I start to wonder. Finally, I say to Hannah, "I really don't think we're in France anymore. Did we somehow miss border patrol?" All of the signs are referring to things in Switzerland, and we couldn't get the sat. nav. to actually find the town for which we're looking. We follow the directions to the town we think is just before our retreat site. The roads have been poorly plowed, and not only is there a single business in sight, but there are absolutely no people. What is this place, some sort of frozen "Andromeda Strain" scene?  We pull over-well, more like skid over- and try to get the sat. nav. to find our town.  No luck.  We had passed a ski hill a little ways back, so we start to make our way back there to ask for directions.  There's a cute little cheese shop across the street form the ski hill so we go in, ring the bell, and a French-speaking woman comes out.  It turns out that if we continue on the road we had been on for about five minutes, we would reach the border.  Five minutes.  Good grief!  Needless to say, about 10 minutes later, we are happily pulling in to our retreat center.

Just wait, our adventures with Susie Sat Nav, as I named it, much to Hannah's dismay, are not over.  Four days later, after a really fantastic conference, we're back on the road. This retreat center was on the side of a mountain, so you can imagine our anxiety about driving down on the narrow road after it had snowed for three days.  We finally make it back into the town, put in our destination to the sat. nav. and we start to drive on the road to the autoroute while the map is loading.  Now, Susie Sat. Nav. says that the route is 100% loaded, but there is no map, no directions except when she says every five minutes, "Recalculating. Please drive to highlighted route." WHAT IS THIS HIGHLIGHTED ROUTE?  We notice that the car behind us is full of people from the conference who live moderately in our same region.  Why not just follow them (through the skill of looking in the rear view mirror) until we get to France, and then just follow signs towards our town?  Perfect.  We're driving along, and as we pass an off ramp, we see that the car pulls off.  Whoops.  Well, we're both smart women, I have no doubt that we can make our way back to France.  I mean, it was only about 10 minutes to the border, right?  Half an hour later, we're still in Switzerland and the signs are now directing us to cities that are sounding more and more German.  Finally, I say "Hannah, I'm pretty sure we're going in the wrong direction."  We pull off into a town, look at a map, because the sat. nav. is still not working, and figure out what road we need to be on.  We get back on the autoroute, in the proper direction this time, and we start looking for road signs.  There are NONE.  How do people get around this place?  We eventually make it to a town that looks familiar, and we pull over again to consult the map.  A very nice man offered to drive in front of us and point out which exit we would need to take to get onto the road we needed.  An hour after we left, we drove through the town from which we had started, and ten minutes later were at the border. 
Good. Grief.  On the upside, I did get to get a picture of the giant metal chicken statue.