The Full Montenegro: Car rescue...again!

Us with the 296th best car in the UK

We’ve not had much luck with our Montenegrin cars.

Our first Montenegro vehicle was a Honda CRV whose 4x4 system we broke in Romania and which we scrapped back in the UK. Our second was a cursed Renault Espace whose electrics made no sense and rarely worked and which we sold at a large loss (again back in the UK) on the very day Which? magazine declared the ’98 model (ours) 296th out of 296 in a customer satisfaction survey. Our third was Boris the Landy, and you know what happened to him if you read the last blog entry. Our fourth was not in fact Ken, Boris’ replacement. Our fourth was actually a dark green Skoda Fabia TDi that we bought in the UK for peanuts, spent rather more than that getting it through its MOT and brought to Montenegro to act as our cheapo runabout while guests were ferried about in the Landy.

With the Landy being taken back to the UK each year to keep it legal for all European driving, the Skoda, we figured, would come to Montenegro and stay in Montenegro on local insurance. This left us with the dilemma of what to actually do with it while we were away over Christmas.

“We could just leave it at the villa,” I suggested. “If our house gets broken into again, what’s to stop the Skoda being nicked?” said Emma.

Now the Skoda was no joy-rider’s favourite, but underneath it was a VW, and a sought after diesel VW at that, so despite Montenegro’s low petty crime rate it might still prove too tempting a target for passing ne’er-do-wells given that 70% of all vehicles in the country are Volkswagens (and how do you suppose all of them got here?). So we did the next best thing. We dumped it in a field belonging to a local friend for three months. Hey, our friends Tim and Katie dumped a car in Greece for years before returning to collect it – and it started up first time.

All I can say is that Nissan batteries must be superior to VW ones, because when we returned to collect the car, it was growing several kinds of fungus inside and turning the key in the ignition did absolutely zilch. Using my NVQ in mechanics* I deduced that the battery was dead and needed replacing. Only the battery couldn’t be removed without a 11mm socket and a ratchet wrench, and mine were in Croatia.

We tried jump starting the Skoda from the Landy. Nothing. Then our field-owning friends Ana and Mio got involved and suggested giving it a bump start. I was pretty certain that with no charge in the battery a bump start was a waste of time, but we gave it a go anyway. Nothing. Mio then began to tell me that the “akumalator” was dead and pointed under the bonnet. The what? Did he mean the alternator? That would be mean we’d have to tow the damn Skoda to Podgorica to get it fixed (urgh). I was wary of taking anything Mio said about cars at face value on account of him being a) no more knowledgeable than I and b) blind, so re-iterated that I thought it was the battery, which made him screw up his face. He called his mate Dragan instead.

Dragan and I go back a few years. He was the plumber who installed all our pipes etc at Villa Miela, and he did a first rate job. I had, however, made a point of not calling him up and asking for his help for a year or so simply because I had spent the preceding three years doing exactly that, and had noted this patient man’s growing exasperation with me.

“I only need to borrow an 11mm socket,” I told Mio, who was already on the phone telling Dragan to bring jump leads. “I don’t need jump leads!”

Dragan rolled up 10 minutes later, and gruffly nodded hello. It was the sort of nod that’s a bit like a Montenegrin shrug in that this small movement can speak volumes. This nod said “So I’ve got to dig you out of another hole, have I, you daft English bastard?” I explained that I just needed to get the battery out and that I could then try and charge it or buy a new one. Dragan looked at me, confused, and muttered something about the akumalator. I didn’t have the language to tell him that there was no proof the alternator was broken, and re-iterated my need for an 11mm spanner. At this, Dragan gave me some high speed verbals and headshaking, and told me my jump leads were “shit” and that English people were not used to doing things for themselves.

“In England you are too soft. Look at you, Ben, you don’t know how to fix anything, you haven’t got a clue.”

Huh.

I leaned against the car door and told them to do whatever they thought best. This turned out to be 45 minutes of fannying about with jump leads trying to start a dead battery, and two gos at bump starting a car with a dead battery, after which they tried jump-starting the car again with FOUR leads and revving Dragan’s Dacia to the end of its rev scale in an attempt to get the Skoda’s battery (did I mention it was dead?) to accept a charge as the car lay off the path and half into the field. The engine coughed. And then died again, which seemed to be sufficient evidence for Dragan and Mio to give me that sort of “ah-hah” that means “see, told you so!” – despite the evidence pointing overwhelmingly towards progress of the f***-all kind.

I lost patience.

“FFS! Listen, you two, the battery’s clearly dead. Why can’t you just lend me a spanner so that I can heave the bloody thing out?”

As I said this in English there was no real response. Mio pointed at the bonnet and said again that in his (blind) opinion, the akumalator was at fault.

“Mio, it’s the bloody battery!” “Akumalator!” I heaved a big sigh of frustration. “Mio, what the hell IS an akumalator exactly??” Mio pointed directly at the battery.

The French for battery is batterie. The German for battery is Batterie. The Italian for battery is batteria. And yet in Serbian it’s called an akumalator. This made Mio right, me a plonker and Dragan a condescending clot. I thanked them both for their efforts, borrowed Dragan’s spanner, removed the battery and bought a new one after my charger told me that the original had expired and had joined the choir invisible. I returned to the Skoda with the new battery, and of course, it started up first time – sadly, not in the presence of Dragan, which sadly rendered irrelevant the smug little speech I had prepared for him.

“Hah!” said I. English bloke does know how to fix something after all. I gunned the engine to make my getaway and mud sprayed twenty feet into the air. Five minutes later, I had moved all of three inches and had churned a lovely scooped channel of oomskah into Mio’s field. I was stuck.

Bah. I hate cars.