All this rain we had been having lately, has made me remember an event that happened around 1992 . I was together with my cousin on our back packing "world tour, to fortune and fame", we arrived in Germany and met up with some old friends whom we met on a previous holiday in Tunisia.
I remember Germany as being quite clean, but not easy to hitch hike. We were stopped on several occasions by the German police, to be told we cannot walk "there", and we were forced to hack our way through a jungle it seemed. As soon as they turned their patrol car out of our sight, we were back walking the road again, laughing and giving the cops the long middle finger. What rebels we were!!
We hitched and got deeper into Germany, we admired their cars, which we thought were very much "customised", well to cut a long story a bit shorter, we ended up grabbing a ride off 3 guys. Two from the country known back then as, "Yugoslavia" and their friend from the country known back then as "Czechoslovakia".
They picked us up from a motorway, in Austria, their car was an old beat up Lada. We squeezed ourselves into the car, back packs and ourselves taking up all the room that was left. It was very cosy and we all sat really tight together, well we had no choice.
Our driver drove up the motorway towards Vienna, I had bad knees at the time and I begged him to let me drive the car for a bit, just so I could "stretch" my legs. Sure enough he agreed. I don't think I had been driving for more than 15 minutes, when we noticed lots and lots of smoke, billowing out from underneath the bonnet. I stopped the car and we all got out to see, The bonnet was opened and the engine was on fire. It was quickly put out with cola.
We carried on up the long road to Vienna, this time I was once again a passenger. We reached Vienna and our driver began stopping to ask people something.
The people responded by shaking their heads and pointing in the direction we came from.
We were back on the road, foot to the floor heading now towards Graz. We we reached Graz, we had our driver once again all excited, ask many different people some question..... I was very curious as to what was going on... Which I found out was, they were looking for a market, of all things.
We drove it seemed all day back and forth before we found it.
A crap and junk market. They loved it. Like kids in a sweetshop.
They bought deodorant by the box, car stereo and speakers, pens with the LCD time display, watches; if I remember correctly 58 of them.....it was all junk to me and my cousin, just crap.
We packed all the things into an already packed car and off we drove. We arrived at a motorway service station, where they fed us like we were "royalty". Big burgers, Ice cream etc etc. That was to get us happy. Then they asked us if we would, put the things into our backpacks and take them over the border. At first my cousin said, no... I said it would be ok. I really was a bit naiive back then. I had crossed over the countrys border on numerous occaisions, never had my bag checked yet, besides, all what we had in our bags , to me was just rubbish.. No diamonds, no drugs, no money...
We agreed eventually and they helped us with packing. We drove until we were close enough to the border to walk. We said good bye to the guys, who said they would wait for us over the border, and they would pick us up and take us to Greece.
We stopped at the border and were asked if we had anything to declare.. "No", we said. One of the customs men, took my backpack and tipped it upside down, spilling all the contents onto the table... well, 58 watches and 12 cans of deodorant etc, and we were promptly "arrested".
We got told off. We were asked who told us to take the things over for them, even given a chance to find them, so they could be "busted". We never found them. We were told to report to the police station in Yugoslavia on Monday, it was Friday now, we had our passports confiscated and had no cash at all.
They released us telling us we needed to go to court on Monday. It was a long weekend. We pitched our tent high up besides a big river, it was wet and rainy. We tried to build a fire, but everything was too wet. Hungry and cold and getting quite wet. We ate raw potatoes from a nearby field, corn on the cob also raw, but with a bit of sugar that we had., all in all our tent was quite homely and we made the best of things...
Come Monday morning, we had our "court case", we needed to pay a huge amount of money for a "translator" even though the judge spoke English perfectly. We received big fine each and were told to sign a piece of paper, saying we will not complain about this incident with our government officials... not really wanting to we signed, collected our passports and headed out for the Greek border. We gave the border guards the middle finger. Greece here we come. We enjoyed Greece, the sunshine the tzaziki....great times
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