Years ago...
I was on a family holiday to Hamburg Germany, aged about 12 or 13. On the continent, as well as driving on the right, drivers also rarely stop at crossings unless bidden to by the law...
So there we are, Mum, Dad, little brother and me crossing a dual carriageway and taking EXTRA care. Green man, traffic lights red...walk across to the central reservation. Green Man, traffic lights red...set foot onto the road. I swear, the instant we set foot on to the road the green man switched to red and the lights (with no break) went green. At the other side of the juncion, 20 yards away, some maniac steams off...From the middle of the road, me and my brother leg it for the other side, while my parents stay in the middle and wait for the car to pass. As she does, this woman leans out of her window and screams something at me and my brother. Obviously therefore she doesn't see the taxi reversing out of a parking space in front of her until too late. She hits it, swerves onto the central reservation and mows down a small sapling. A split second later, she's out of the car and she f*cking starts SPRINTING towards me and my little bro shouting stuff in German and shaking her fist.
I'm not kidding, to use a bit of a geeky comparison, it was like a 'fear' spell...me and my bro crapped it and started running! We went through this park and managed to lose her after a bit, but then we didn't have a clue where we were. Luckily my superb sense of direction meant we only spent 20 minutes walking around the block til we peeped round a corner and saw my non-comprehending parents being talked at disapprovingly by a crowd of Germans. They saw us, got away just before the police got there, and we all went for an ice cream while my Dad assured us that we 'probably' wouldn't be caught and arrested. It's all good!
(gunken 100% better than tungsten, Wed 18 Oct 2006, 23:42, Reply)