Since the start of the week we wanted to visit Faizal, who was entering his third week with C. Pox (as Ohta-san terms it), but we had put it off until today, Wednesday, because of this or that reason. So finally we decided it would be good to cheer him up a bit. I was sure that if I were in his place, I'd appreciate company. So at the end of the day, we agreed to meet near Kuznetsky Most station and then drop by Dom Inostranykh Knigi (House of Foreign Books) before going to Kotelnicheskaya Naberezhnaya. (Didn't really buy anything this time since the reference book on the World's Languages was sold out.) Deciding that we'd have picnic indoors with Faizal, we drove around the corner and shopped at Sedmoi Kontinent at the back of Lubyanka Square for some food and wine. On backing out of the parking space the car started to sputter before quickly going dead. I repeated the procedure a couple more times with the same results. (The 24-hour supermarket is located on the side street to the left of the former KGB building -and former Torture Central- below.)
At first I was worried about some maintenance problem, since the transmission has not exactly been as smooth as Lindt in the last two or three weeks. I remember a colleague telling me at work about how he had to pay a few hundred euros after he filled up using watered-down benzin (petrol). Eventually I started worrying whether I had enough petrol in the car tank. Couldn't be, the gauge is still above empty. When it became evident the car was not going anywhere, we decided to leave it right in front of a bus stop along Sretenka and just come back for it perhaps with a little help from Faizal. In the end he had to call Alex, who helped us get petrol using two Aqua Minerale plastic containers (had to pay 5 rubles more per litre since it was illegal to do that), fashion a makeshift funnel and give us a lift back to Sretenka.
It was really supposed to be a quiet evening spent with a friend, but it turned out that the more memorable event was the lesson of sorts I learned.
At first I was worried about some maintenance problem, since the transmission has not exactly been as smooth as Lindt in the last two or three weeks. I remember a colleague telling me at work about how he had to pay a few hundred euros after he filled up using watered-down benzin (petrol). Eventually I started worrying whether I had enough petrol in the car tank. Couldn't be, the gauge is still above empty. When it became evident the car was not going anywhere, we decided to leave it right in front of a bus stop along Sretenka and just come back for it perhaps with a little help from Faizal. In the end he had to call Alex, who helped us get petrol using two Aqua Minerale plastic containers (had to pay 5 rubles more per litre since it was illegal to do that), fashion a makeshift funnel and give us a lift back to Sretenka.
It was really supposed to be a quiet evening spent with a friend, but it turned out that the more memorable event was the lesson of sorts I learned.
