“A German couple in a Fiat Ducato 2.3
diesel campervan, heading for Turkey, found this place listed in a German guide
book. They stopped for the night in the car-park of the motel and, in the
morning, found that their campervan would not start.
After a few minutes the owner or
manager of the motel came over to see what was wrong and, when they told him
they had a problem with their engine, he called over a friend of his, who had
been sitting in a car about thirty metres away, saying he was a mechanic. (That was lucky, wasn't it, him just being
there and being a mechanic?)
This fine fellow soon diagnosed that
the problem was with some electronic component, which he removed. He told them that a new one of these things
would cost in excess of 2,000 euros back in Hungary but, luckily for them, he
was fairly confident that he could locate one locally for far less money. Off he went, only to return in about 10
minutes with, he said, a new component which he fitted. After a bit of fiddling
about, hey presto, the engine was all right.
The owner of the vehicle is a retired
German businessman, who, ironically, was in the electronics industry. He didn't want to tell me how much he paid
this man and his helper. He would only
say to me that it could have put an end to some people's holiday.
After reflecting on the incident, he is
convinced that someone got under the engine compartment of his vehicle during
the night and detached the electrical supply to the fuel pump. Thus, all the
stuff about the electrical component was untrue and all that needed to be done
was to reconnect the wire to the fuel pump.
He and his wife went to the police
station in the town of Velika Plana, identified the miscreants from a series of
photographs and made a statement to the police, who seemed to know the people
involved quite well.”
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