Of martens and mechanics

During one of my last forays to this region, I had a particularly memorable encounter with a sweet little creature known as a pine marten, which the locals fondly refer to as a ‘taśka’. One day, when I was starting up my car outside my boarding house, the engine made a strange gurgling noise before the light lit up on my dashboard to tell me that it had broken down. I opened up the bonnet and pulled out the broken belt that had connected the engine to the alternator. The owner of the B&B suddenly appeared as if out of nowhere (good hoteliers are gifted with this ability) and showed me an indentation on its surface. “A taśka’s gone and bitten through it, sir,” he informed me with some satisfaction. And so, I was forced to set out on a quest to find the nearest mechanic. As it turned out, most of the establishments that I found online only existed in Google’s imagination, so with a growing sense of panic I was forced to take even more mountainous