Romania, 1992.
We were there to teach, but had discovered that being English was our credit card to pretty well anything at all, and that the £300 we'd saved each for the duration, added to the fact that they were paying us 50% of a teacher's wage as well - which we hadn't been expecting - meant that we were among the richest people in the city. This was not something of amusement for the ex-KGB-type who was our guardian, and who really wasn't very impressed with this invasion of capitalism into his once-great motherland.

We were 18. All we were aware of was that we could get 40 tabs each and shit-faced for under a tenner for the both of us.

We'd been warned about drugs, and warned about our behaviour in general - although now technically a democracy, the hangover from communism in Romania was by no means over, and people still had a tendency to sort of disappear-and-only-emerge-unrecognisable-several-years-later occassionally.

Late one evening, however, we were swaying down a dark side road, trudging through pouring rain, loomed over on each side by enormous, faceless grey tower blocks. Quietly over the top of us was the bass thud of a house party, and we discussed earnestly whatever matter was at hand that evening.

Up ahead a big, black Mercedes pulled into the street, splashed through the puddles, and headed slowly towards us, just as I finished my cigarette, and flicked the butt towards the middle of the road.

Instead of behaving politely and falling into the road, the butt flew upwards in a slow arch, pausing momentarily at its zenith, and fell - in a splash of glowing red embers - exactly in the middle of the windscreen of the car. It was the sort of shot it's impossible to repeat.

The driver hit the brakes with a squelch. As the door unlocked, from the driver's side unfolded a guy who made Jaws in James Bond look like Penfold. Sillouetted by the street lamp behind him, he was dressed entirely in black, and wore a leather trenchcoat, which gleamed softly in the reflective orange hues.

I watched with rapidly-sobering numbness.

He crunched towards us slowly, and more purposefully than your mum to a cake shop.

Oh shit, I thought, I'm going to disappear. I'm going to disappear, and my mum is going to cry for the rest of her life, and all because I was more interested in beer than manners. Oh shit. He's going to wear my balls for earrings, and then he's going wander around the dimly-lit room they hold me in, saying "Look at me, I've got earrings made out of Vagabond's balls" in a high-pitched mince, while his friends laugh and stub out cigarettes on my tiny manhood.

"I'm sorry!" I squealed, "I'm sorry I didn't mean to it's just I was smoking and I tried to flick it and I didn't mean to flick it at you I'm really sorry I just meant that ... " as he came closer, ever closer dear Christ this guy is built like a fucking aircraft carrier oh Christ "I just meant that we'd been for some beers and I just wanted to"

He was in front of me, blocking out all available light. My mate appeared to be watching with disconnected fascination.

"It's just, you see, we're from England, and, well - I didn't understand, I mean, that wasn't deliberate or anything, it's just that I was, well ... " I whined.

He leaned down, his face level with mine, as I stared, terrified, up at him.

"I just ... I'm really sorry ... " I had gone beyond whining now - my voice was pitched somewhere in the range between dog whistles and bats.

"Sorry is all I wanted to hear." he said, his accent thicker than your sister. "It is no matter, I know you didn't mean it."

He turned, strode back to his car, got in, and drove off.

I don't even know if he was the police.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 10 May 2011, 14:13, 2 replies)

Scary Big People...
all of them. Only the other night I was at the hospital with one of the work kids and they were running around screaming and basically causing a rucus to all the nice hospital users. So, in steps two massive Lithuanians. Kids initial reaction was too look at them and scream "fuck the law!!!!". Two seconds later the kids brain was doing the mental arithmetic of 40 stone of muscle against his paltry 10 stone of fear as the Lithuanian whispered, "you calm down, or we!, help you calm down". Not a peep out of him for the rest of the night.
( dazbrilliantwhites has been meaning to change this..., Tue 10 May 2011, 14:38, closed)

Romania '92
Imagine that back then, 100 German marks would secure all the expenses of a family for a month. I live here, I still remember :) 100 pounds was quite a fortune back then. Try it now, it wont work.
On the other hand it was a no man's land. The big guys with foreign cars were not the police but the new mafia with new money and power. They owned the police. Some still do. Cross them and if you were lucky you ended up in a hospital. You were lucky since you were foreigners. But things have changed, and that is a good thing. Best,
(rhatanu, Tue 10 May 2011, 15:59, closed)