I left the house, with plans to gas up at the cheaper of the two gas stations on the way to my destination. As I was turning onto the main thoroughfare where those stations are located, I saw the traffic backed up to the lights I was waiting at! Mind you, I am not often out of the house at 7:30am these days, but I didn't think this was morning rush hour traffic. Turns out, cars were in line at the station 1.5 blocks down the road. Of course, this was a BP and they always have higher prices, and the station I wanted to stop at, further down the road, wasn't open. I had assumed as much, seeing the line for this one.
Not having clarity on the gas situation, other than some kind of strike was going on, I decided that I'd need to go wait in that line before I went home. (I felt it was too early to call anyone who might have more detailed information and hubby was unavailable.) We were pretty much on "E" and there were some places we need to go in the next few days. Not knowing if this was a 24 hour strike (as many strikes are here), or if it could go on indefinitely like the last time this happened, I figured I best get some fuel.
I probably managed to piss off some people already in line, since it extended way beyond the intersection I entered it at. I realized that a bit late and was low enough on gas that I wasn't going to try to correct my mistake. No honking or yelling in my general directions, so hopefully no harm no foul.
While in line, I was trying to decide whether to fill up, or get 20 Euros of gas, just to get by for a little while. That decision was taken out of my hands, I learned as I approached the pumps. We were limited to a 20 Euro purchase. Probably best, since this station is more expensive anyway. So after about a 20 minute wait, I got ~4.5 gallons of gas for a little under $30. Wow, that's the first time I've really made that conversion (gas in liters to gallons and dollars). That's ~$6.50 gallon. No complaining from you guys on gas prices!!! Sure, we always have someone doing the filling up for us (no self serve here), and if he's in a good mood he cleans your windows, but that's just not worth the price difference!
My biggest weakness in having a hard time understanding the news is knowing when strikes are coming. I'm usually lucky and stumble upon the information in a timely manner, except for the one time I walked the whole 25 minutes to the Metro, only to find the strike hours started about 5-10 minutes before I got there. Nice.
We have all sorts of strikes here, and I had kind of forgotten about them as they don't really happen during the summer. But I guess we have returned to strike season. Time to pay more attention to the news.
UPDATE - just spoke with hubby and it turns out this is a Customs strike (I believe at the Port of Pireaus). They aren't allowing in fuel and possibly other things. I still don't know what determines which gas stations would be open for business today, but am doubly happy that I stopped to get my share!
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