| | Published July 4th, 2012
| In Search of Power
| | Submitted by Amanda Griggs |  | |
|
While my vacation took place in Europe, mainly Italy, my story is not about relaxing days at the beach or other vacation-y activities, but rather focuses on the pursuit of an object that I didn't know I had a need for.
For those who don't know, Europe has different electrical plugs than America, which means power supplies cannot be plugged in without an adapter for the socket. Of course, being an electronic-dependant family, we had plenty of adapters, but we did not account for the voltage change. Most electronics, such as laptops and cell phones, will work with just an adapter, but my Nintendo 3DS needed a lower voltage, and thus would not charge. We would be doing a lot of driving around Europe, and as video games are my main form of car entertainment, I asked if we could possibly find some sort of adapter that would downgrade the electricity and allow my gameplayer to charge.
So, in 100-degree weather, we set off in search of an electronics store. The first store we tried didn't have what we were looking for, but did serve to warn us about an impending language barrier.
At our second location, a large mart with a small electronics section, we were told to go to a mall named Simply. After getting lost on the way and inside, we finally arrived at a promising store. The man inside spoke English, and was able to identify the problem and what was needed to fix it. However, his store did not stock a charger for a 3DS, so he gave us directions to another store close by.
At this point it had been over an hour of searching. To make things worse, we were now going in the wrong direction. When we realized we were lost we tried asking around, but no one had heard of anything that was not Simply. We tried multiple directions, but none seemed to yield our store. One member of our family was about to give up, but we decided to ask one last time. Finally! Someone who knew of a store similar to our description and close to our current location!
After almost two hours, sweaty and thirsty, we stumbled into a wonderfully air conditioned store filled with TVs and cables. We simply showed the DS and with a cry of "power supply!" were sent off with a small adapter proven to power my system.
It broke three days later--because it was Italian-made, at least according to some Germans who were bitter about losing the big soccer game against Italy.
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA