Cherry-Picking the Interesting Bits #1: The Russian Truck Driver

I keep thinking of other things I should have added to the meme yesterday, but now I think it will be more intriguing to share them with you one at a time.

Today's Interesting Bit:

I was once in a car with a German friend when we had a blowout at 180 km/hour, in the middle of a winter night, on a dark highway in the Czech republic.

She didn't lose control of the car. She had a spare tire. But we had no tools.

And then a truck driver stopped to see what was wrong. Barbara and I both spoke English, German and a little Czech. The truck driver was Russian and spoke none of these three languages.

Fortunately, Czech is just similar enough to Russian that by wrangling with a dictionary, we eked out some bare bones communication. At least, we managed to convey the concept of "Wrench? Do you have?"

And when we all got a close look at the inside of the shredded tire, we all understood when each of us said some variation of "Holy #$*&%."