A lucky break

Posted by Barbara on August 1, 2022 in Blog, Europe, Leisure activities, Living today, Seasonal, Travel | 2 comments

When things went well my mother would never say how lucky she was. She preferred the term ‘fortunate’. ‘I am very fortunate that…’ was a stock phrase of hers when something had gone smoothly.

I find myself doing the same, yet the following events I wish to relate can only be described as ‘lucky breaks’ in my view, so here we go:

I have already referred to our recent holiday in Greece, where one of the many cultural and historical delights sampled included the discovery of Kalliopi Papalexopolou, the heroine of Napflion. And it is in Napflion where my tale begins. We arrived there about a week into our trip, and noted that it was time to refuel the hired car. We pulled into a small service station and asked the petrol attendant to fill up the car. Self service in that part of the world does not seem to exist. ‘Petrol or diesel?’ he asked. ‘Petrol’, we stated firmly, having specified this on the car hire form. He did as requested, took 80 euros from us, and off we went. You’ve probably guessed already…

We left Napflion a few hours later and drove back to the remote place where we were staying. A couple of days later we needed to pop into the village to stock up on food, and the car proved very difficult to start, but we managed. This situation only worsened, with the car beginning to sound very peculiar indeed, so on the penultimate day of our holiday we decided to find a garage to avoid possibly getting stuck on the way to the airport.  We stopped at one of the local shops and asked the owner where we might find a garage. He pointed across the road, and we limped in there.

At the garage we were doing our best to explain the problem with the car – with me frantically thumbing through my Greek phrase book for the section entitled ‘My car has broken down’- when the mechanic called his colleague over. He also didn’t speak English, but, wonder of wonders, spoke Russian. Like my significant other, he had fled his Soviet Union birthplace as soon as perestroika permitted. When we told our sorry story he looked grave and informed us that we had put petrol into a diesel engine. He was astounded we had got so far on the wrong fuel, but reassured us it was fixable before our departure the next day. Relieved that it could have been so much worse, we asked for details of a local taxi firm, as we were over an hour’s walk to our house, it was very hot and we were loaded down with shopping.

‘Absolutely not. Taxis cost a fortune round here. Take my old car and I’ll call you when yours is ready’, said the wonderful Sergiy, handing us a set of keys.  A few hours later we got the call.

Now if that is not luck then I’m not sure what is: the car defied all known rules by running for around 70 miles on the wrong fuel, we found a mechanic in the locality with whom we could communicate perfectly, the engine was not damaged and he fixed it in 3 hours, and he lent us his car.

Sorry, Mum, but that’s a bit more than fortunate.