Flat Tires, Friendships & Foreign Living in Bulgaria
It was a beautiful spring afternoon as we drove down the main road winding towards Sofia. We had just left our landlady’s apartment in Godech, a small town nestled in the heart of the Balkan mountains. I was enjoying the rural scenery on our descent, already anticipating the familiar juxtaposition of urban scenes and rural landscapes lying cheek by jowl around the northern margins of the city.
All of a sudden we felt a small jolt and heard a tire deflate. If that alone wasn’t enough to penetrate my wandering thoughts, a slight tug to the left fixed my mind on the sad revelation that we had indeed popped a tire and would have to stop and fix it. For a brief moment I wondered whether we had everything necessary to complete the task. A lot of people use our car, and it isn’t unheard of to lend out part of your kit to help a friend in need, so the question wasn’t an idle one. I ran down the mental list: spare tire - check, jack - check, tire iron - check. Confident we had the required tools, I quickly recalculated our travel time and adjusted mentally for a later arrival home.
Nothing is as Simple as it Looks
After laying out all of the the necessary pieces, I turned my attention to removing the flat tire. Using the tire iron, I worked my way around the wheel. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get a single lug nut loose. I think the last time we changed this tire was a seasonal shift from summer to winter tread, and my arms were just no match for the hydraulic power used to turn them tight.
What to do next? My first instinct was to call Toshko, our vehicle meister in Sofia. He does everything to take care of our cars, and at the very least he needed to know about this problem to help us pick up the pieces later on. I knew it was unlikely he could personally offer any practical help, but just talking it through with him cheered me up a little.
“Flat Tires are Our Specialty”
Browsing the internet I noticed a service company in Kostinbrod, just a few miles away from where we were stopped. Eureka! I called the owner, explained our predicament, and agreed to wait for him to come and help. He was 45 minutes away on another job, but said he would make it over to us as soon as he could.
In what seemed like no time at all a service van pulled up behind us and stopped. The mechanic jumped out, surveyed the scene, and quickly got to work. He casually picked up the tire iron I had dropped next to the offending wheel, tried a couple of good tugs, and tossed it aside in disgust. “You know what to do with that thing?” he asked, motioning towards my useless tire iron, “Paint it gold and hang it on the wall, as a reminder to only buy good tools.” He dug his own, heavy duty tire iron out of the van and made short work of the whole procedure.
We settled up and parted with a hearty fist bump. With a smile on his face he quipped, “I hope I never see you again.”
The Ghost of Flat Tires Past
This was hardly the first time we found ourselves stuck with a flat tire somewhere in Bulgaria. Over twenty years ago, the first van we bought came delivered without any emergency equipment on board. We knew we had to get a jack and tire iron just in case, but one thing led to another and we never actually got around to it. We did have a spare tire, but that wasn’t worth much without the requisite tools to change it. It was only a matter of time before disaster struck.
Sure enough, one day we hit a deep pothole and popped the front left tire off of its rim. I didn’t yet speak much Bulgarian, so calling for help myself seemed a bit too much of a stretch. How could I even explain where I was, let alone describe what help I needed?
So I did what any other helpless newbie would in my shoes. I called my good friend Tony, my miracle worker, the one who always got me out of a jam. In those days we depended on him for just about everything, from shopping to errands to on the fly translation in a pinch. It didn’t matter where he was or what he was doing. When I called, he simply dropped whatever he was doing and came to help. Pretty soon he was by side again. “Just leave the van locked and climb into my car,” he said. He drove me home, then took off to fix the car himself.
The next day Tony returned the van, pulling it up to park in front of our place: Tire fixed, new spare mounted, and a full complement of emergency gear stowed safely inside.
I hope Tony chuckles when he reads this story. Who would have thought back then that flat tires would lead to reflections about friendships, foreign living, and learning to help ourselves?