📙 Part 2: Describe a time a vehicle you took broke down during your trip

This episode's vocabulary

Reliable (adj.) - consistently good in quality or performance; able to be trusted.

Breakdown (noun) - a mechanical failure.

Cold snap (noun) - a short period of cold and icy weather.

Open-air (adj.) - used to describe a place that does not have a roof, or an event that takes place outside.

To chance (verb) - to risk something.

To keep someone amused - to keep someone interested and help them to have an enjoyable time.

To take the edge off something (idiom) - to make something unpleasant have less of an effect on someone.

Well-versed (adj.) - knowing a lot about something.

To withstand (verb) - to be strong enough, or not be changed by something, or to oppose a person or thing successfully.

Questions and Answers

R: I'm very lucky, because almost exactly a year ago this happened, so thank God. But let's get started, shall we? To be honest, we have pretty reliable public transport in my country and reliable transport in general. So breakdowns are relatively uncommon. However, one time last year, I was travelling back home at Christmas, and the train broke down. So that wasn't great. In more detail about where it happened, this was between Glasgow and Dundee on what must have been one of the coldest nights of the year. As it turned out, I'd picked the worst time to travel since there was a massive cold snap, and a load of trains stopped working and got cancelled. And then on top of that, a lot of people are travelling at that time of year, so I was stuck with a whole lot of people. So all of these cancellations meant that we were forced to wait for hours in this open-air train station with minimal heating while things got fixed and replaced. As for the when of it all, I'd just returned from a trip to Paris, and was making my way home to be there in time for Christmas the following day with my family. So that means that this would have been Christmas Eve, to be exact, when the train broke down. So it's not the best time to get stuck anyway, since there are so few drivers and other staff available, and the weather is bad anyway, but I had just chanced it, and things, unfortunately, didn't go my way. When it comes to who I was with at the time, I was actually by myself. I should have just stayed in Paris or Glasgow or something, because my friends would have been nearby. So it was just me and my phone. I'd blown through all the books I had with me on holiday, so I didn't even have them to keep me amused. Still, at least I had some videos to watch online to take the edge off the cold and boredom. But I still wasn't very happy. I'm honestly at a loss for words as to why it did break down. I'm not really well-versed in train mechanics, and I'm surprised they aren't built to withstand this kind of weather. Scotland is known for cold winters, and yet, every year, things like this are a problem, not a huge one, but they're still a problem. Thank heavens. The people in charge managed to find a replacement train, or we'd have been stuck there overnight, but I made it back, and just in time for Christmas too.

M: Hey! Thank you, Rory, for your story!