Adventures with the Dacia continue

My dad used to drive a concrete truck. That was Diesel. Trucks have Diesel not small city sedan’s right? Well the robust Romanian Dacia takes Diesel – now I know. I also know what happens when you put petrol into a Diesel engine!!! Not at all good.

Seems like all my adventures happen on the road. This time we set out to our next city, Timisoara. We were lucky enough to be given the trusty Dacia to take along which was a huge relief. No one likes the idea of public transport here. On the way we stop for petrol, benzina as it’s commonly known as here. We pull up at the pump unaware what any of the labels mean but realise they’re some form of petrol. Good. Surely this can’t doesn’t take Diesel so we can’t be wrong. Fill her up, pay and head back on the highway (one lane between major cities is considered a highway here!).

Dacia starts to choke, she starts to shake. What am I doing wrong? Chug. Chug. Chug. Linda and I look at each other. Maybe I’m driving too a high a gear. Yes that’s it. Go down to third. Chug. Chug. Did we put the wrong petrol in the car? Agnes on the other end of the line quickly confirms that of course the car takes Diesel! What? So what now? Should we pull over? Can we continue? Oh fuck. Will we make our meeting at 2pm? Could we be that stupid? We call people. One says pull over straight away, the other says go to Timisoara and sort it out there. Hmm. We pull over on the side of the road. There is a poor unsuspecting victim standing outside his village house, unaware his afternoon will involve hard work.

Linda asks him for advice. It’s happened to him twice. I feel reassured. He’ll help us. We have to get the petrol and out, do some technical things and put diesel in. I try to start the car to move it off the side of the road. It doesn’t start. Jesus what have we done. Why would this need to be a Diesel engine! I see three robust men and Linda out of the rear vision mirror as they push the car to safety. The man’s father emerges laughing and another older man who will surely be the knowledgable one gets to work.

They have empty plastic containers. This will be interesting.
I have some vague recollection from my youth of my father sucking on a hose pipe to get petrol out of a petrol tank and sucking until the petrol touched his lips in order to empty out the tank. It seemed easy enough, but I wasn’t going to step in at this point. Apparently you can’t do it like that anymore, not with new cars the younger man informs us (well informs Linda – I understand nothing but am given little bits of translation). You have to remove the back seat, do some strange thing to remove something I’ve never seen and then suck the petrol out. 5 plastic containers later, yes we’d filled the car up, all 35 litres it could handle, we have one empty petrol tank. There are some further complications I don’t understand. One man opens the bonnet and looks aimlessly for something. The younger man emerges from his backyard with what looks like a plastic bottle filled with Diesel he just happens to have lying around. Some further complications but soon enough we have 5 litres of Diesel in the car, the car starts and we’re assured we’ll make it to the next petrol station 5kms away to fill up.

How lovely of these men to help us damsels in distress. And what did they want in return? Nothing. Well except the 35 litres of petrol they’d sucked out of the car! They helped us and dealt with the unwanted petrol as well. Super. Back on the road and we reach Timisoara and make our 2pm meeting. We vow to go back and bring the men a bottle of something strong.