gas station anecdotes3 min read

taking a trip in a car is bad. cars suck. it’s not as terrible as flying of course, but still awful in an ecological sense. we agree. ah, the guilt.
as an aside, after this trip to ireland i will now sell my car. since i gave up my share of our family mountain house my last “justification” to even own a car has left. public transportation/mobility will do fine from now on.

but having said all this, it’s also bloody amazing to travel by car. almost nothing beats cranking up radiohead’s paranoid android (best rocksong ever) way up on a freeway. with subwoofers! you also get to places, that you would never reach otherwise, like all the funky backroads we took, the tiny beaches, the remote mountains. plus you’d never get these superb gas station anecdotes:

anedote # 1:

near bantry, it’s only the second time ever we get gas in ireland, as i exit the car to try and start pumping, i notice a dude approaching me, his hand extended to greet me, saying “hiya whatyerrrname”. turns out it’s a serviced station and he would do the pumping – after shaking my hand, mind you. needless to say, that “hiya whatyerrrname” became some sort of a mantra for our trip.

anecdote # 2:

near wexford, it’s the last time in ireland we “fill her up”. the prices for gas in england are outrageous, so we want a full tank at the much cheaper rate in ireland. the cashier messes up and keeps converting my credit card payment to swiss francs, with 3.5% fee added plus a terrible exchange rate. i contest this, but he clearly doesn’t know how to handle credit card payments. he keeps repeating “i am just doing what the machine tells me” and always ends up with the wrong total. finally he shows me and i can point out the mistake he was making. but that line “i am just doing what the machine tells me” almost made me crack up and that would have been so not appropriate; the good lad was already shaking in anger.

anecdote # 3:

near london, dammit the full tank didn’t get us through ingerland. we have to get a few liters for 0.94 per liter. as i approach the gas station some french guy in front of us slows down in hesitation, i pass him and start pumping. suddenly i perceive the guy, who by the way looked like he could be sarkosy’s brother, standing to the right of me. he says: “ich kanne nichte pumpen wegen sie, weil sie quervorfahren haben mir”. he must have seen that i am swiss and decided to complain to me in “german” – or what he thinks to be german. i hate that. i look at him and say to him in best cockney accent i can muster: “just bloody go and fuck yourself”. i look away again, but as i do so i can perceive how his jaw drops. he keeps standing there giving me the evil eye, probably he is contemplating, if he should bite my head off. after a few seconds i look back at him and tell him: “just fuck off”. finally he does.
i don’t feel proud of this. the poor frenchie received the bad end of all my frustrations, from being stuck in a traffic jam near and in london for hours and at the french elections results. but man, did it feel great to vent. omg. random anger bursts at gas stations rule.