Halfway down the Danube

Breakdown

So it finally happened.

We were driving through Transylvania. Specifically, we were about halfway from Sibiu to Arad. A little bit past Deva, if you really want to know. Anyway, we were out of Sibiu judet.

That's a key piece of information because in Sibiu judet, the roads are pretty good. Oh, they're not highways -- there are no highways in Transylvania. But they're decent two-lane roads with a reasonably smooth surface and shoulders. We're not sure why. Does Sibiu have better government? More honest or diligent road engineers? Whatever the reason, once you drive on past Sibiu, the road gets a lot worse.

So we hit a pothole. It was maybe the twentieth time on this trip that we hit a pothole at speed. But it was one time too many. Bang: flat tire.

Our car had broken down. In Transylvania.

Oh, that's all. It wasn't dark. It wasn't even raining. There was no crumbling castle nearby. Not even a sinister manor house.

There was a construction site. We pulled into its parking lot and started messing around with the spare tire. Within a minute or two we had workmen from the site gathered around the car. They politely took over, removed the old tire -- it was completely destroyed -- popped on the spare, spun the nuts, and there we were. I gave them a couple of hundred thousand lei and we all shook hands and they waved us off.

They didn't even tell us how few strangers visited their village.

Okay, there was one interesting bit. The spare tire was what some people call a "doughnut" -- an old tire that's just there to get you to the next service station. So we drove on it slowly until we reached Arad, an hour or two later. Arad is a decent sized city, a couple of hundred thousand people, near the Hungarian border. We drove into the center and within fifteen minutes we found a place that had a tire: not a perfect match, but good enough.

Now, this place was a garage with a bunch of men hanging around out front. I mean, just hanging around... leaning, standing, chatting, just shooting the breeze. Two men detached themselves from the crowd and interacted with us, while the rest of them just continued to hang around.

The two men were Tall Quiet Guy and Short Guy Who Wouldn't Shut Up. Tall Quiet Guy had hands covered with grease and a general air of competence. Short Guy had clean hands, a nice leather jacket, and a general air of not shutting up. Short Guy didn't speak any English, but he did have a little, a very little German, and that was enough.

"Meister!" he said, gesturing at Tall Guy. "Kein problem! Meister! Meister!" Meanwhile Tall Guy was messing with the tire. Short guy waved his arms, emphasizing his point. "Ja! Meister! Sehr gut! Kein Problem! Meister!" Tall guy pounding on a difficult nut with a hammer.

"Um... thanks," I said to Short Guy, and then to Tall Guy, "uhh, eu pot sa ajut -- " I can help --

"That's OK," said Tall Guy in near perfect English. "What I really need is for that freak," flicking his wrench at Short Guy, "to go away, and that's not gonna happen."

I stood there dumbfounded for a moment while Tall Guy continued banging on the nut. Short Guy was still waving his arms and trying to catch my eye. "Ja, Meister! Kein Problem! Meister!"

"Uh, you speak English."

"Yeah." Tall Guy spun his wrench and a nut leaped free. "He doesn't, though." Snap, whirr, off came another nut. "He doesn't make sense in Romanian, either. But he's the boss. What can you do." He began walking around the car, tapping the other tires, checking for weaknesses.

"Er... you're sure he doesn't understand English?" Short Guy was waving after us, still emphasizing Tall Guy's Meister-ness.

"He lived in Austria for ten years, this... specimen... and see how much German he understands." Tall Guy grabbed the ruined tire and rolled it into the shop. "This'll just be a minute."

And so we stood there for a couple of minutes, while Short Guy repeated his eight or ten German words -- there was no problem, this guy was a master, really -- and then Tall Guy brought us back a new tire and popped it on.

"How much?"

"Half a million." Not very much. Especially not much for a foreigner. It's common in Romania that foreigners pay more, because we're all rich. I've become so used to it that I'm a little surprised now when it doesn't happen.

"Okay... Hey, thank you. Thanks a lot. Um, your English is really good."

"Yeah? Well, thanks."

And we got in the car and drove away. We waved. Short Guy waved wildly back. Tall guy raised a hand. Even the bunch of guys hanging around briefly looked up.

I'm sure there was a story there. I wonder what it was.

But anyhow, we can now check "car breakdown while driving through Transylvania" off the list.

Posted by douglas at March 21, 2005 07:58 PM