Ljubljana, Maria, thunder: the second Saab breakdown

Raindrops as big as peas pelted down. Sam and I sheltered under a tree. The rain only got heavier. The echo of thunder bounced around the street. The clouds flashed white as behind them lightning cracked and exploded. It was no good. We weren’t getting to the shop. We turned back and jogged towards the hostel, Sam’s flip flops skidding on the cobbles.

In the reception Maria was on the sofa, equally wet, suitcase by her knees. “Stuck here as well?” I asked. “Yes,” she said, gloomily, “But my train is at three. I’ll have to get a taxi.” “Where are you going next?” “I’m here for a little conference in a town about an hour from here.”

Maria had slept in the bed opposite. I had heard her before I saw her when she scolded the American adjacent. His alarm had rung a dozen times until he dragged himself from under the covers. He was annoying. But she was grumpy. After all, this is a hostel, I’d thought, and rolled over back to sleep.

Later, I’d crossed the river and lay on a bench. I watched clouds drift overhead, and listened to the birdsong and water. Twenty minutes later I sat up and saw Maria about to walk past me. “Oh! Hello, how are you?” I asked, thinking I would reset my impressions. “Fine, thank you. I’ve been on the walking tour, and I found a lovely restaurant.” She pulled out her map and began to trace out the route for me. Then she looked up and said “here, you can have it.” “No, no, that’s fine,” I said, waving it away. “You should keep it. I always like the keep the actual map I used in a city, battered and scribbled on, as a souvenir.” “Me too!” “So you should keep it.” On the walk back to the hostel I’d asked about her work. She said she worked on gender equality policy in Portugal. She was warm and friendly.

Back in the reception, I wondered. Did bumping into someone twice in one morning mean something? Was this the sort of serendipitous nudge you’re supposed to follow when travelling? Why not. I should offer to help. “Would you like a lift to the station? I have a car. It’s about ten minutes from here.”

I borrowed two umbrellas from the stand, and we set off. It was wet. Very, very wet. So wet that the umbrellas were pretty much useless. The rain pounded the pavement, bouncing back up against us. I began to question my decision. But this was an adventure, so we pressed on.

The night before, we had tucked the car up against a hedge on a quiet side street. “Hang on here, I’ll get it turned around so you can get in.” Maria took cover under the overhang of the house opposite. I turned the key. The car was always a little slow to start, turning over four or fives time before firing up. It turned over ten times and didn’t catch. I started over, holding the key in place. It whirred endlessly. I looked out of the window and saw Maria waiting. I felt sick. I tried it once more. I didn’t know what to do. The thing wasn’t going to start.

We were now ten minutes on top of the already half hour walk to the station, without a taxi number and time running out. What had I done? I opened the door. “I don’t know what’s happening. We drove all the way here last night. It was okay!” “Did you leave the lights on? Maybe it’s the battery”. Maybe it was the battery. The lights were on now, but I couldn’t remember whether I’d done that when I got in, or whether it was already like that. Perhaps I flattened the battery. I tried to think fast. “OK. Erm, I guess we should try to push start it?” With great difficulty, we dragged the large Saab away from the bushes and into the middle of the road. Without power steering, the wheel fought me for every inch.

We began to push. Once it was rolling, I hopped in and tried to start it. We tried that several times, pushing it back for ever greater run ups. It was no use. An elderly man appeared and joined us in the rain. With hand-waving, we explained what we were trying to do. He gave me instructions in Slovenian. I interpreted them as putting the car in second, and pumping the accelerator as we went.

In the rear-view mirror I watched Maria and the old man as they slogged behind a tonne and a half of my broken down Saab.

He called out new orders to me, but they were lost on me. I didn’t understand what he wanted me to do. I gestured several times for him to get into the car and to let me push instead. “No! Mechanica, mechanica,” he would reply.

He and Maria discovered they had some German in common. Communication began to improve. “He thinks you’re out of petrol.” I was sure I wasn’t. The indicator was only halfway into the red. But who knew, perhaps it was a faulty sensor in the car. “He has some petrol,” she said as the man disappeared into his garage.

For a few moments, there was silence. We looked at each other and after a moment began to laugh. “This is ridiculous!” Maria cried, a grin spreading across her face. I’ve always thought you can tell a lot about a person in adversity.

Mathias — Maria had asked his name — returned with a small plastic jerry can and motioned for me to pour it in. After twisting on the funnel and untwisting the petrol cap, it occurred to me to double check. I showed him the cap with the word ‘Diesel printed on it’. His arms went up. “No, no, no! Bencin, bencin,” he said, pointing at the can.

“He is saying he will take you to the petrol station,” Maria interpreted. “Wow. That’s amazing. Tell him thanks. Will you wait here? I don’t suppose we’ll be long.” She climbed into the front seat. “Don’t worry. I don’t think I’m going anywhere.” Mathias emptied the can into his own car and handed it to me. We climbed into the little silver Citroen and reversed out of the garage.

It occurred to me at the petrol station that this was the first time I’d ever filled a jerry can instead of a car. This is what parents did. I am a grown-up, I thought.

Back at the Saab, we tried again. It didn’t work. Finally, I indicated my resignation by rolling the car onto a gravel driveway. A man came out, and Mathias explained the situation. The man said “OK! No problem, no problem,” resting his hands on his round hips and observing proceedings. I opened the bonnet and mimed putting plugs onto the battery. Mathias went off to fetch his car and leads.

Alone again, Maria and I leant against the car. The rain had eased off now, almost to a stop. Our T-shirts, acting as wetsuits earlier, were now sucking heat from us. Maria was beginning to shiver. I remembered my fluffy leather-filled jacket in the boot. “No, no, you’re cold too!” she protested. “Don’t worry. I’m from Wales. This is tropical for me.” It was partly true. I watched as she hunkered down into the jacket, some colour and a smile returning to her face.

Mathias rolled around the corner and parked his car in front of mine. We waited tensely for a few minutes while power trickled into the battery. It didn’t work. So, it wasn’t the battery either. Mathias began repeating the word “service” over and over. He spelt some letters out to Maria, and I typed them into my phone, finding what looked like a garage. I showed him the screen. “Ja, service,” he replied. On the phone, I was passed to an English speaker who told me they could come and pick up the car, but it would be at least an hour.

My mind turned to our other problem: Maria’s long gone train. Since the battery was fine, she started charging her phone in the car. It was old, and the battery was draining quick. “I’ll be late, but when I get there I can call them, and someone will come out to pick me up.” After explaining to Mathias that we were leaving as she had to catch a train, but that I would be back, she turned back to me. “He’s saying he’ll drive us to the station!” Mathias was fantastic. Back in the Citroen, we crawled through rush hour traffic.

We pulled up outside the station. I could understand Maria thanking Mathias over and over in German. We both climbed out. “I’m so sorry about all this. I’ve ruined your day!” “Don’t worry, it’s OK. I’ll get there eventually. It was an adventure.” I gave her a hug. I wasn’t sure what else to do.

On the drive back Mathias talked at length. I think he was telling me about the time he spent working in Germany, which is how he picked up a bit of the language. As we approached his street, I saw a pickup truck turning in. “That’s it! There.” I don’t think he saw the truck, so must have concluded I was trying to point out his own street to him.

Finally, Sam arrived. I’d sent him a series of increasingly desperate messages. ‘We have a bit of a situation here with the car. It won’t start! Can you come?’ And eventually, ‘The pickup truck is here! Hurry! I don’t know where we’re going.’ He’d been caught up in a call with a client. I had felt in real need of backup.

Mathias was talking the pickup driver through everything we’d tried. He tried to start the car a few times before kneeling to find the hook point, then pulled out the winch. As he lined the car up, I wrote ‘Thank you so much for all your help. We’d be lost without you’ into Google Translate, and showed it to Mathias. We waved him off.

With the car loaded on, Sam and I walked around and climbed into the truck. There was paperwork and empty cups everywhere. The driver asked us something. We shrugged our shoulders. “Yes, it’s my Saab,” I said, pointlessly.

As we rolled passed Mathias’ house, the old man rushed out, waving something in the air. We stopped and rolled down the window. He handed a phone into the cabin. It was an iPhone. “No, that’s not ours. We have ours,” as we pulled our phones out to show him. I passed it back, but he was insistent. He spoke urgently beyond us to the driver, who searched for words before saying “Girl. Friend. Phone.”

I sat in silence. As the driver wove his way across town this new problem unfurled in my mind. Maria is at the station now, or possibly on the train, with no way of getting collected at the other end. “Is there anything you can do with this?” Sam, as a former Apple Genius, would know what to do. I handed him the phone. “She’s got the extra layer of security. Even if she manages to call the phone, we can’t answer it without her code,” he reported. I couldn’t think. “OK… Erm. OK just turn it off to save the battery. We’ll have to figure that out later.”

We pulled up outside a row of garages behind a petrol station in an industrial part of town. The driver filled out a form in triplicate, writing 59.40 euro at the bottom. I went to the ATM at the petrol station then paid him. He lowered the car onto the garage forecourt, and an engineer came out.

He watched the engine for a while as the pickup driver turned it over. He went back inside, returning with a huge can marked ‘Brake Cleaner’. He then unhooked what looked like the air intake. As the driver turned the key, he started spraying it in. The engine roared back to life, violently rocking in its cradle. When he stopped spraying it spluttered back to silence. He repeated the process a few times. The car fired an enormous black cloud into the air, leaving a cone of soot on the concrete behind the exhaust. He stopped.

“I cannot fix this today. I think it is fuel pump. It is expensive. You will call on Monday.” That was that, then. I wished him a good weekend and shook his blackened hand. Walking back to the main road we rushed to catch a bus that was pulling up. It looked like it was headed into town. The driver pointed at a contactless card reader. I swiped my card to no effect. After some failed dialogue the driver said “OK, OK, sit down,” waving us into the bus.

My mind turned back to Maria. I realised I should call the hostel. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before. “Actually, you just missed her,” the receptionist said. “She said she would try to find the man who dropped her at the station.” “If she comes back or calls, please tell her to stay put! I’m not near, but I’ll head there now.”

Twenty minutes later, my phone rang. It was a Slovenian number, presumably the garage. “Tom! It’s Maria! I’m at our friend Mathias’ house. He says you have my phone.” “I do! Head to the hostel and just stay put! I’ll meet you there.” We arrived first and sat down at the bar outside the hostel. With an enforced weekend in Ljubljana and nothing else to do, we ordered a beer.

Maria arrived, flustered, and joined us. “I am so, so sorry. Can I get you a drink?” I pleaded. “It’s OK. It was an adventure,” she reassured me. I wasn’t convinced. “But I should leave soon. I’m really late.” It turned out the train had been pulling out of the station when she realised her phone was missing. She’d travelled all the way there and had to come back. “But how did you find my number?” “Mathias called every pickup company in town. One of them said they knew the British guys with their Saab.” “That man is incredible. I’ll go and thank him before we move on.” I grabbed a pen. “Here, this is my number. Please let me know when you get there safe.”

Pocketing her phone and extending the handle on her suitcase, she set off. I sat back in my chair and watched her cross the bridge. She didn’t look back. Over a second beer, Sam and I contemplated how a road trip without a car might work.

Two days later I had a text. ‘Hi Tom. I am a rockstar here because of our story! I’m passing back through Ljubljana tonight. My flight is from there in the morning. Want to meet for a drink?’