13 dec

We should have stayed home, Julie said when I told her, in the evening, that it was friday the 13^th.

We didn’t.

We went to Perugia

We wanted to go and see the largest city in Umbria, whose hayday had been in the 13^th and 14^th century, but still has a university and its jazz week makes it into the liveliest cities of Italy.

We followed Tomtom (our sat nav) to guide us to the city centre. We were pretty far away from the city when we were instructed to follow a completely different directions than what the motorway ‘Perugia’ signs said. I thought it was fun to listen to Loesje, as the female Flemish voice on our satnav is called.

It was a mistake.

Part of the mistake was mine. Merlin is a marvel in many ways. She always starts, with the help of her friend the choke, whose company she only likes for a few minutes. On motorways these days she happily speeds up to 110 km/h, which makes it possible for us to pass most trucks and all the people above 95 that are still allowed to drive in this ancient country.

But Merlin needs food. Food meaning petrol. But when does she need petrol. That is the question, because the fuel gauge doesn’t work. When the tank is full, the gauge says it’s empty and after it is half empty it starts indicating it is almost full, with wide swings though.

I have figured that she drives about 1 on 5, 1 litre on 5 miles that is. That means that, with a 70 litre tank, we need to refill every 350 miles. But I am always a little optimistic in these things. When I say these things, like 350 miles, Julie’s brain becomes a little calculator and thinks: OK, we will need to get new petrol after about 250 miles. Which means, in reality, that she’s getting nervous after about 150 miles, and to prevent that, she gets petrol after about 75 miles. Better safe than sorry, is her thought.

It is a waste of time of course, except that my way of overestimating the abilities of the car is more inefficient. We learned that today.

Driving into Perugia I was looking at all the petrol stations. Petrol is crazily expensive here, more expensive even than Holland. We paid €1,91 for a litre on the motorway on the way here. I knew we needed petrol for our way back tomorrow. I was hoping to find a station with prices in the 1,60’s. No such luck. €1,73 was the lowest. We had driven 275 miles, so I thought we could easily wait for fueling up on the way back.

We couldn’t.

The last stretch of the lovely route that Tom-tom had found us driving into Perugia was a stretch of hill that went up. Steeply up. Really steeply up. Even though (calculation afterwards) we still had 5 litres of petrol in our tank, the slope of the car was such that it was not able to reach the engine. We stalled a few times, let some cars pass, started up again, got 100 metres further a few times, but then the motor just didn’t want to get started again. This was halfway up a hair (not hear) pin curve about 1 kilometre from the city centre.

Not a good place to be stalled. Small road and brakes that had only been tested when the motor was running.

Think of a Woody Allen movie here, me acting like Allen pretending to be in control. Don’t panic, I will say, panicking. Julie got out of the car and directed the traffic as I backed Merlin a few hundred meters down the hill – stopping traffic or allowing cars to go on through when they were getting too agitated – till we found a stretch of soil next to the road where we could park Merlin.

But still, how hard I tried, no way to get Merlin started. We were still on that darn hill, you know.

No panic, Woody Allen said, when he was acting frantically. I’ll go and get some petrol.

And down Woody went, blessing every car that passed him for having the courtesy of not hitting him, which several of them tried to do, or better said: didn’t try to prevent.

Gas station one (with not the most favourable petrol prices) was no success. The focus was on selling hot dogs. Hot dogs in Italy, that didn’t seem reliable to me. I was asking for gas, I realized afterwards, which is really asking for LPG, which they didn’t have. But “there was another gas station 1 kilometre down the road which did have gas”, the lady (350 pounds of her, mostly hot dog I suppose) said.

So on I went.

It wasn’t 1 kilometre and probably not even 2. The road went on and on and on. But then there was this gas station (with the most favourable prices we had seen). The guy who was helping filling up LPG-cars said he spoke a little english, but did not understand that I needed a jerrycan with petrol. Luckily one of the clients turned out to be an invaluable translator. Eventually, there I stood, with a 20 litre jerrycan of petrol, looking up the steep hill that I had to go and walk up.

Julie had said: put your thumb up, maybe someone will give you a lift, which was beyond my pride and my age group – I thought at first. With my jerrycan full of petrol and the view of the hill in front of me, my thumb went up automatically and within a minute a friendly young guy stopped and brought me back to Julie and Merlin.

Well, what to say. It took a while, but Merlin finally started. We drove into the town on a road that, after about 500 metres from where we were stalled, was forbidden for trucks and campers, but there was nothing that was going to stop me now. We found a narrow parking spot, still on the steep hill. I was still wondering if Merlin’s brakes would hold up, they did.

But then, we saw Perugia. A marvel of a city. Lovely and lively, just as expected. It was foggy, so we didn’t see that much, could hardly see the tops of the towers. It is a town to get back to, Julie said. And she’s right. Although we won’t take a campervan and even without the campervan we will follow the official signs to the first acceptable parking place. And walk from there. I mean, walking is fun, except for walking to a gas station. And I have learnt my lesson. I will refuel Merlin earlier, although it might be smart to take a little jerrycan of petrol on the way. Just because I know it will be difficult for me not to challenge my own shortcomings. I mean deal with them. I mean overcome them. I mean: change! Better take my walking boots next time.