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Italiano (Italian)
In this article I will talk about the incredible car mishaps and problems with the car on the road that happened to us in the Czech Republic but also in the days nearby, both to me and my family members. This was our itinerary.
Car problems before Prague.
Already in the three days before picking up my brother at Malpensa, with the same car happened to me:
- Traffic collision suffered at a traffic light in Pavia
- Flat tire between Pavia and Milan
- Collision with a pizza stand in Milan.
- In the Malpensa parking lot, we help those parked next to us whose battery had died
The pizza stand did nothing, but it destroyed a mirror for me. Since it was a holiday and everything was closed, I tried to hold the dangling mirror in place by wrapping it with a T-shirt.
I am a disciplined motorist with few major events to report, but almost all concentrated on those days.
Arrival and departure from Prague
By the time we arrived in Prague it was late. It seemed impossible to find a parking space, so we squeezed into a multi-story one without giving it much thought. Back to pick up the car, there were two surprises. One was the price of parking; we practically spent more for parking than for sleeping. The other surprise was a flat tire, the same one that had gone flat in Pavia a few days earlier.
We tried to change it ourselves, but we could not. Later, they explained to us that with new cars you can only do that maneuver with the unscrewer because the bolts are closed too tight to loosen by hand.
Moving away toward the suburbs (it was Sunday), we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere until we had to stop on the road. Also whipped were all our attempts to get some physical or moral assistance using the telephone. In fact, we discovered that the much-vaunted insurance assistance my father had only applied to Italy, and to Europe only if the car was stolen.
We should have looked for some Czech phone number and somehow explained where we were. However, it was too dangerous to go ahead with the tire in that condition. While my brother was cursing in every language he knew, I was flaunting my prankster’s confidence claiming that he should take it easy because I am lucky.
My dumb luck
Two to three hundred meters away we saw a supermarket sign. I suggested that we should at least take the car over there where there would be real parking. We were on the side of a rather large road that led from Prague’s ring road to a small suburban town with an unpronounceable name.
Thinking that we would find nothing open and no one who could help us out, here was our hope embodied, indeed in-tabled in the sign of a car dealership. To my increasingly disbelieving little brother I said, maybe they are open, they test and buy cars on Sundays, and maybe they even have the workshop open.
So it was! and they were very kind. A gentleman who spoke no English, but whose eyes were smiling, put the spare tire on us in five minutes. He didn’t even charge us for the trouble. Probably if we had called roadside assistance he would have come and charged us quite a lot even though he was nearby.
We set off again for Dresden; we had lost a morning and so did not get to see enough of that very interesting city. After dinner we went to a pub where there was a duo playing rock covers; I love those places, but having to be in the smoking room, so both aloof and smoky, watered down such pleasure. My brother was tired and we soon headed back toward the hotel, which was quite far away.
I accidentally call the alarm
On the way home, I don’t know how, we became suspicious that the LPG transition was not working or that it had had some problem because of the cold weather. This was because we remembered that once with my father, just on the way back from celebrating my brother’s graduation, we got stuck on a snowy Marche highway.
At a German truck stop I thought of trying to push all the buttons in that overly technological automobile with which, it was now well known, I just could not have an effective dialogue.
After we had partaken of a couple of frankfurters and the inevitable beer, I noticed that there were a dozen calls from home and a couple from an unknown number in my cell phone, which, as is my healthy habit, I had muted during lunch.
I called my father who all concerned asked me what had happened. I asked him why something should have happened, and then I understood the reason for such alarmism. Without knowing of its existence, I had pushed the alarm button, a kind of red phone, which instead of calling Batman is used to tell the police that you are in trouble. My father then activated to call back the service center, which would then stop the patrol car that was working to reach us. We had done that, too!
Car problems on the road, but also at home
The next day my brother began the tour among friends he had not seen in three years. Around 10 p.m. my father called me and asked me to go and help him; he was having trouble with a tire on his car.
I joined him, and after a while my other brother arrived as well. We basically created a column with the family cars on the side of the Adriatic highway. The Australian brother had blown a front tire. Not the one we had changed in Prague. My father, already that morning had had the bad tire replaced.
Even on Italian soil we could not change it ourselves. Roadside assistance arrived immediately. Fortunately my brother was going slowly, at a higher speed, the problems would have been much worse.
The little man with the tow truck explained that he would not even try to change it since he did not have the necessary equipment and confirmed that it is impossible to unlock the bolts of new cars by hand. He was going to take it to us to a tire shop. But there was another catch. The other brother’s car was not able to move either. He had left it with the headlights on and the battery had died! At least for this the car rescuer had no difficulty.
The next day, his car being at the tire shop, my father, took my brother’s car, which was less technological and with the battery suffering a bit from the above event. In addition, my father had become accustomed to certain vices that his car gave him, including the one that there is no need to turn off the headlights, it does everything automatically.
Problems with the car ended…after a while!
The next day my father left the house, still early in the morning, but in his tire-refreshed car. In the middle of the morning the doorbell rang and in the house with my mother was only my Australian brother who, being on vacation, was rightly snoozing as much as possible. Since my mother does not drive, she woke him up because a truck was to pass by the narrow street. They asked for the courtesy of moving my brother’s car. But of course it would not start, because this time it was my father who had drained his battery again!
They jumped out some cables and got it started fairly quickly, but my brother had gotten a bit worked up, and was probably not quite awake yet. With the laudable purpose of not wasting any more time on those who had to work, he tried to hurry himself up, but because of his lack of attention he leaned too firmly against a low wall, thus giving work to a bodyworker as well.
All these events happened in the space of ten days. But, I should add that after a few weeks, due to a mishandled breakdown, I had to sell my car and buy a new one. In the days of the transition I used my brother’s car, and I too managed to drain his battery.
Home Together Travel Going to the Czech Republic and also to Bratislava but not only
Previous stop Go to Prague, plus see Snow White’s castle
Trips taken, travel stories divided by continent
Countries visited in my travel stories
Anecdotes, divided by type in travel narratives
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