WRITTEN TRANSCRIPTION OF THE PODCAST:

Hello and welcome to my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. My name is Dagmar Tomášková, I am an English tutor and coach and I created this podcast for English students who want to get better in their oral comprehension. As always you can find the transcription of this episode, comprehension quiz, and vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast.

Even though I talked about Scotland, France, and Iceland in previous episodes, I kept a few stories to myself. Some of them because I didn’t feel like sharing them at that time – especially when I felt embarrassed– and some of them because they were too long to include in an already lengthy episode.

Anyway, here is the one where I destroyed a car in Iceland. I think it sounds worse than it actually was but let’s go.

As some of you might remember, during our summer in Iceland, we worked on a farm that had also a hotel and a restaurant. Overall, it was a big complex of various buildings that were spread on a big parcel. Because of that, a majority of people were going from one place to another by car. I mean, it was not far away at all but if you have to walk 40x a day from one building to another, you start to think that walking is just not an option.

Because of that, we had also staff cars – cars that were meant to be used by the staff – people working there. Mainly, for example, for housekeepers who were dragging big bags of sheets, pillows, and other things between the buildings but it was also meant for the days off. Anyone could borrow the car for a trip. The only thing you had to pay was the gas but otherwise, you were good to go.

Unfortunately, and I am sorry I have to say this, the two cars that we had, were terrible. They were old and a bunch of things weren’t working as they were supposed to. Still, they were the only cars we could use so when we had our days off, sometimes we borrowed them (and sometimes we hitchhiked but that’s again a different story).

On our last day off, my boyfriend and I decided to borrow one of the cars and we decided to go to a place we hadn’t visited before which was a waterfall in the east of Iceland. The road that led there was not the best. In general, you have roads in Iceland divided into types.

The main road – which has one digit and is the most famous one, the ring road – it is a number 1 road in Iceland.

Secondary roads that have two digits, so for example 54 which are still well maintained.

Then three-digit ones which are more difficult to drive on and usually those are gravel roads.

And lastly, you get to an F road, where you have to have a big truck that is 4×4 because otherwise, it is extremely dangerous because they usually lead you through rivers and big hills.

On our day off, The weather was awful, it was foggy and rainy but we just took our raincoats and went on our way.

I don’t remember exactly what type of a road it was on our day off but it was the three-digit one – so not an F road but not the easiest road to drive on. Which I was fine with in the beginning but when we got there, I had my heart in my stomach as I was driving on it with this car. Just to give you an idea about the state of the car, you couldn’t even lock the car, the keys were not working. Fortunately, Iceland is not a Czech Republic so you could be pretty sure, no one steals anything – especially a car like this. It was still a bizarre thing to leave a car open like this in the parking lot.

Anyway, while on the gravel road to the waterfall, I could already feel that something was wrong with the car. Shifting the gear got more and more difficult and I was getting more and more scared. To shift gear is to change the number of a gear shift – you have to do it when you drive a manual and not an automatic car.

I could feel something was wrong because when we were driving up a hill, I was shifting gears from 5 to 4, from 4 to 3, from 3 to 2 and the car was slowing down and barely going.

So when we got to a small waterfall, I asked my boyfriend if we could come back because I was afraid that the car wouldn’t make it much further. He agreed. He didn’t want me to be stressed about it.

Therefore, we got on our way back. When we got from the three-digit road to a two-digit road which was, you know, like a normal road, I could already feel the stress leaving my body a little. Because I felt a little better and we still had time, we decided to visit a canyon not that far away from our farm.

It was also up a hill.

As I was driving, I could feel again the difficulty of shifting gears. I was shifting gears from 5 to 4, from 4 to 3, from 3 to 2, from 2 to 1 and suddenly, the car just stopped in the middle of the hill. I couldn’t do anything to make it move again and I was holding the brake with my foot. When I wanted to secure the car and pull the hand brake, I realized that the hand brake WAS NOT THERE. Our boss had taken it out because it wasn’t working.

I was sitting in the car and holding the brake pedal because if I took my foot from it, the car would just ride down from the hill backward. I didn’t know what to do. After a few seconds, smoke started coming from the hood of the car – that is the front of the car where the motor is.

We started freaking out. My boyfriend jumped out of the car and started yelling at me that I should get out of the car too. But I yelled at him: „I CAN’T!!! IF I DO IT, THE CAR WILL GO DOWN THE HILL“.

I was just hoping I wouldn’t see any fire but I was a bit scared, let me tell you. After a few minutes, someone stopped with their car near us. It was some man and he asked us what was the problem. We said we didn’t know and he looked into the hood. He said he didn’t know what it was but it was probably an overheated gearbox. It calmed me down a little because then it was less probable that the car would explode.

Eventually, I just slowly reversed the car from the hill. When it was back on a straight road, it was possible to start it and drive again. I was praying that it would manage to get us back to the farm but after a few minutes of driving, we got on this really really small hill but the car was done. It did the exact same thing as before so I again had to reverse the car for like 400 meters down a hill and we called our boss.

I was so scared that it was my fault, that I was a bad driver and I destroyed the car. I was tired, stressed, cold, and hungry and I wanted to go to bed. But we had to stay in the car and just wait until someone from our farm would come and get us. After like 45 minutes, we could see our handy guy coming in his car. I was so happy to see him. He and one other guy from the farm inspected the car and then secured it behind the other car with a rope. On the way back to the farm, they found out that the car was done and didn’t want to drag it all the way back, so they just left it there in the field in the middle of nowhere.

Finally, we got back to the farm. I was glad we were back but I felt so bad. We went to see our boss. When he saw me, he said with a cheeky smile: „you destroyed my car!“ and I said: „I am so so sorry about it“ and he said: „Nah, I was just waiting when it would happen, it was just a matter of time“.

Well great. I wish the time wouldn’t come when I was the one driving the car but what can you do? At least it was my last day off so we didn’t need to borrow a car after that.

And that is the end of the story.

If you want help with your English, write me a message or follow me on Instagram, where I post a lot of useful information and there is a lot more to come. So if you are interested, definitely follow me on my account dagmar_tomaskova – I will also link it to the notes.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode and don’t forget that you can find the transcription, vocabulary list, and comprehension quiz in the notes. Please give it a five-star rating if you liked it and…I hope this episode helps at least one person.

I will see you next time, bye-bye.