Lebanese Nuns Don't Ski

By Paul Bradbury

So what would you do if your wife ran off with a hairy truck driver?

A drunken moment of clarity sent the author out of his local pub in Oxfordshire down to the M40 motorway, armed with little more than a daypack and a fluorescent orange cardboard sign 'South Africa', in a half-baked attempt to put distance and perspective to his pain.

What started out as self-indulgent escapism quickly turned into an educational journey of other people's suffering and loss, which helped put personal events into context. From visiting the prisons of Rwanda, gun battles in the West Bank, being held at gunpoint in Kosovo and playing Stalin's piano in Georgia, to causing a bomb scare in Jerusalem, surviving a plane crash in Eritrea, a hospital visit in Somalia and a friendly rat while camping in Madagascar, this nine month trip from local pub near Oxford to local pub near Oxford via the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East and Africa brings to life the lives, loves and losses of the people and places encountered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Bradbury
• Release date: Nov 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301294381

Paul Bradbury

I am a Brit, living on Hvar since 2003, and author of Lebanese Nuns Don't Ski and Hvar: An Insider's Guide. I also run the island's biggest information portal, Total Hvar, which is updated daily, as well as writing for Google News via Digital Journal.

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LEBANESE NUNS DON’T SKI?

Published by Paul Bradbury at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Paul Bradbury

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

LEBANESE NUNS DON’T SKI?

by Paul Bradbury

Prologue:

Chapter 1: Blackbird Inn to Vienna – Tandem Torture

Chapter 2: Croatia and Bosnia – Tajik Travel

Chapter 3: ‘Greater’ Albania – Hooligan Hobnobbing

Chapter 4: ‘Greater’ Serbia – Belgrade Babes

Chapter 5: Pale to Istanbul – Midnight Meandering

Chapter 6: The Caucasus – Stalin’s Samovar

Chapter 7: Iran – Refugee Reality

Chapter 8: Dubai to Beirut – Buying Bikinis

Chapter 9: Israel and the West Bank – Holocaust Hijacking

Chapter 10: East Africa – Arabian Aeroflot

Chapter 11: The Great Lakes – Goodbye Genocide

Chapter 12: Nairobi to Somalia – Travolta Turbulence

Chapter 13: Malawi to Madagascar – Hunting Haystacks

Epilogue: Madagascar to Blackbird Inn – Painless Pints

Prologue

So what would you do if your wife ran off with a hairy truck driver?

Well, I guess for some of you, this would be great – finally escaping the nagging and not having to share the remote for the TV. But what if you were in love, if you thought your life was perfect, if she ran off just a year after the wedding? What then? I am sure that there are at least a few of you who might have reacted the same way as I did, a dual strategy of moping and drinking.

The Moping. This is not something I want to dwell on, as it is personal, but it consisted of being imprisoned in the past in our newly-refurbished marital home, thinking of what was and what might have been, poring over the memories in every nook and cranny. More than one wall was relieved of its plaster as I punched, kicked and screamed. Although there was blood on my hand, I felt no physical pain from the wound. There were so many photographs around the house of course. Of happier times and their effect was to reinforce my loss, my grief. Often I would curl up into a ball and cry. A lot.

The Drinking. There is nothing big or clever about drinking to excess, but the twelve pints a night, every night, were the only source of escape I felt was open to me. It kept me out of the house, away from The Moping, and it kept me away from reality, something that I couldn’t deal with. There was not a morning in those six months where my head did not scream out in agony as soon as I opened my eyes. But, pitiful and desperate as The Drinking was, it provided…

The Way Out. A certain clarity comes through drinking - brilliant schemes, which fail to stand up to the scrutiny of the sober day, are foolproof when seen through the pint glass. At first, these drunken ideas centred on what I would do to win her back and, in my optimistic moments, I could portray the whole thing as a silly misunderstanding that we could iron out in no time; the ensuing hangover and slow descent into alcoholism indicated that the sober reality was otherwise.

My fellow drinkers were sympathetic and never questioned my sudden thirst. They all knew of course. Local village boy runs off with pretty incomer – pretty hot gossip in a slow-moving village, and I knew they were whispering in the corner, but I didn’t care: another pint of bitter would blot them out. But after three months, I realised that this could not continue; I had to do something to break the cycle. She wasn’t coming back and the pity was killing me. Poor Paul, they were such a nice couple, whatever is she doing, it won’t last five minutes. And then I had my moment of drunken clarity, which, not unlike all my other drunken moments of clarity, sounded ridiculous in the cold light of day.

So have you any idea what you are going to do now that you have quit your job and put the house on the market? asked Darren, before he inhaled once more. It was grungy in that pub, the smoke hung heavy, the same old faces were cracking the same old jokes. Had I really come to regard this as my home? Who were all these people and what did they know about me anyway?

Darren exhaled. I liked Darren, my neighbour across the road. A tall, dark-haired thirty-something marketing executive from Blackpool, he and his French girlfriend had rallied round and helped me through the previous weeks. I was sure he was here tonight to show solidarity, when he might well have preferred to be home playing the guitar. I can’t go on with all this pity, I have to move on, She isn’t coming back.

I looked around me. Was this it? Was this my life, my usual, my everything? Was this how I was going to live my life now that she had left me? Counting fellow drinkers as my only companionship? I glanced across at the regulars’ table by the door, the only other customers – we had sat there on our first evening in the village and unwittingly caused offence by taking their table; it was going to be hard enough to be accepted into a village community without committing the cardinal sin of stealing the regulars’ table, but they had been friendly enough: Steve, a giant hulk of a man whose immortality was ensured in the John Bull caricature that hung behind his chair, and whose consumption of beer and cigarettes was only interrupted by his constant pontificating on any subject; his wife Rachel, scraggy brown hair and a more or less permanently glazed expression behind the thick rimmed spectacles, as slim as her husband was fat; John was listening to her drone on, but he was in a world of his own – gaunt, harassed, unshaven, unwashed and unloved, his silver hair in all directions – a world of rolled tobacco and Kronenbourg, these would blot out the memories of a life wasted.

I looked across. Was this it? My life?Darren was looking at me earnestly now, as I floated back into his sphere. What was the question again?So have you any idea what you are going to do now that you have quit your job and put the house on the market? I drained my pint, more than half-full and motioned to the barmaid for another. I needn’t have bothered, she was already pouring. Was I really that predictable?

Yeah, I am going to hitch-hike to South Africa. He laughed, they all did, and why wouldn’t they? A drunk with another crazy idea that he will have forgotten in the morning. I wasn’t sure why I said it, but as Darren went to recycle his beer, the drunken clarity took over, gripped me and wouldn’t let go. By the time he returned, I had a focus, a new direction. He changed the subject to the gig that his band were playing the following Friday, but I dragged him back. He listened, nodded and encouraged, but I am sure that deep down, he thought I was nuts. They all did. Perhaps they were right, perhaps I was nuts. I knew that I certainly would be if I stayed round there much longer.

Word spread that I was going to hitch to South Africa. People bought me drinks because my idea made them laugh. The ridicule and the pity focused me more and, while the thought of hitching to Cape Town made less sense the following sober morning, the idea would not leave me. People asked me ‘why?’ but the longer I thought about it, the answer to this was ‘why ever not?’ I could leave everything behind, all this shit, just walk away and buy some time to think and decide on a future. I could hardly spend more money on the road than I was doing on a nightly basis at the Blackbird Inn. Besides, there were friends along the route I hadn’t seen for years from my days as an aid worker.

Why ever not?I became Lonely Planet’s best customer – Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa – and I traded my bar stool for a table in the corner and started making notes. Hitch-hiking through the Sudan looked a bit dubious to name but one country, although it was possible to do the whole trip by land, just. The trip planning meant that I was drinking less, thinking less of Her, looking forward. But it also meant that the ridicule continued. ‘See that bloke in the corner? Wife left him and now he’s going to hitch to South Africa.’ ‘Poor Paul, but at least he’s drinking less.’ ‘He’s really lost the plot with this crazy idea of his.’

Although I was not too affected by the ridicule, I felt that I needed to show them that I was serious, and I also wanted closure on this troubled period of my life. The drunken clarity took over once more and I gave myself a deadline:

I shall come to the pub on Saturday, February 24, at eleven in the morning, sink a couple of pints with friends, and then, at precisely 11.37, I shall walk out with my rucksack, down to the motorway (4 miles) and stand on the slip-road with my sign, South Africa. This was too much for the locals, some of whom had never ventured further than Oxford, a mere twenty miles away. They laughed, they bought me drinks, they gossiped. But they also strengthened my resolve.

As I sat in the corner of the pub, poring over the travel guides and making lists of dates for visiting my friends, I became alive once more. Okay, I wasn’t going to hitch all the way to South Africa as I had drunkenly boasted, but an overland trip was certainly on the cards. Catching up with old friends on the way would be a perfect way to punctuate a prolonged stint of overland travel with a more normal existence.

Having concocted a rough route, I emailed everyone I knew and asked for contacts along the way. The response was astonishing – friends and friends of friends from Croatia, Albania, Madagascar, Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda, Eritrea, Armenia, Kenya, Lebanon, Malawi, Egypt, all welcoming me with open arms.

Other contacts came over the web, as I searched for obscure information that could make or break my trip – would an Israeli passport stamp bar entry to Muslim North Sudan (yes), was it possible to get a Syrian visa on the Turkish border (no), was the Ethiopian-Eritrean border open for travellers (no)? The Lonely Planet web site became my best friend as I trawled the bulletin boards for information. I spent a lot of time in the Middle East section, reading other posts. Some of the posts indicated that there were people less sane than me out there:

‘I am a 24 year-old blonde Swedish girl looking for people to stay with in the Middle East. Would anyone like to host me?’ She was the most popular girl on the web – I just hoped she wasn’t as naïve as she sounded. Another post, entitled ‘Looking for a husband to travel through Saudi Arabia’ had me intrigued.

‘Hi. I am a Western journalist, fluent in Arabic, who is looking to visit Saudi Arabia to dispel some stereotypes. As a single female, I cannot visit alone and am looking for someone to pose as my husband. No sex involved.’

I was curious and scrolled down – the first reply was enquiring about her chest size, and those that followed weren’t much better. I decided to give it a try – after all I had to get across from Dubai somehow. And the Western journalist introduced herself as a 28 year-old Norwegian, who sounded VERY grateful that I was going to assist her. Feelings that had been killed by recent events began to return. All alone with a tall attractive Norwegian blonde in the desert – it was something to look forward to. Of course, she probably wasn’t blonde, but the thought was pleasant enough during those dark winter nights.

A whole new adventure awaited and I couldn’t believe that I had spent so much time and money in the limiting confines of the Blackbird Inn. There was a whole world out there, where She and the Hairy Truck Driver didn’t roam. And I was going to discover it.

Chapter 1: Blackbird Inn to Vienna – Tandem Torture

I awoke suddenly at six, my chest feeling tighter than normal. This painful sensation lasted but a moment as the full force of the hangover kicked in. Lying back in the single bed at in the back bedroom, I went through the daily morning ritual post-Her. Where was I last night and what had happened? Who was I speaking to? A vague recollection of another night at the pub, followed by ‘exotic’ cocktails from our (sorry, my) much depleted drinks cabinet.

There had been five of us back at the house, including that curious dark-haired girl we had met down the pub. What was her name again? Oh yes, Vicky. An odd one, but cute in her own way. The others pointed out to me, after she had left, that she had been keen on me, but I had failed to notice a thing. How was I going to survive in the post-Her world?

Her. That was the reason for the tightness in my chest every morning as I woke.

The post-Her world. Extra tightness this morning – I was finally going to leave it all behind, to walk out of Her world forever. But where was I walking to? I had no idea. What the hell was I doing, quitting my job and just wandering aimlessly out into the world? The doubts set in, but then so did the reminders of all the ridicule of the past few months. If I didn’t walk out of that pub at 11.37, I would never hear the end of it. I looked at my watch; less than five hours until I was due in the pub for that final pint. I got up.

Our dream home, a renovated former post office in a picturesque Northamptonshire village, had been up for sale for three months, with few enquiries. If not exactly a home any more, it had remained my place of residence, as She had moved on with Her life. Now I was seeing it for the last time, as it would surely be sold by the time I returned in nine months. The early morning was spent cleaning for I would be the last person to reside in it. My friends were earning gold stars with the dusters, when Vicky turned up for reasons unknown. She had declared herself an artist the night before, so I put her to work on my hitching sign and, ten minutes later, I was the proud owner of my sign, in fluorescent orange, bearing the words ‘South Africa.’

South Africa. Did I really know what I was doing?

As the others cleaned, I turned to last minute paperwork and packing. My mother had begged me to get travel insurance, which came through at 10.40am. I was busy writing hand-over notes for my father, my partner in our small family wine business. Changes of address to the bank, powers of attorney, things I should have done weeks ago, but had left to the last minute.

I hadn’t backpacked for years, but remembered well enough that it was fatal to travel with too much. It was all very well having a selection of four pairs of trousers when it comes to that party in Munich, but was it really worth lugging the extra kilos for the satisfaction? I decided not. I deliberately bought a smaller rucksack, thirty litres’ capacity, about eight kilos, and forced myself to work within its confines. The trouble was, I was having to think about a travelling wardrobe that would cater to a European winter, a Middle East summer, and the length of Africa. There was not much room for luxuries, especially after I had packed a Terry’s chocolate orange for Polish Joe in Berlin and an Irish flute for Zarafshon in Albania. There was room for only four books, which was unfortunate, as boredom is an enemy that is all-pervasive in travel, in between the exciting bits.

Finally all was ready. One last check in each room, one last chance to wallow in the memories of what was soon to become my past, and out the front door. I locked the door and turned towards the pub, my new mobile home comfortably on my back, with my three friends. 10.58am.

For a building that had housed me more than any other in the previous months, I felt strangely detached from the Blackbird as I entered. It all seemed so alien. There were certain things, once so familiar, that seemed already in the past – my bar stool, seemingly with my buttocks imprinted in the wood; the John Smiths pump, which had seen to most of my disposable income in the previous months; the ‘carpet’, probably dark swirly colours when new, but now a sticky threadbare morass and the butt of endless jokes; the jukebox on the wall that used to mock me occasionally by belting out our wedding song, whose refrain, appropriately enough, was ‘You and Me Always, and Forever.’

We were the first in, apart from Sarah the barmaid, all curly brown locks and brilliant smile. She was going through a similar experience to me and was waiting for her house to sell, before she could escape into the world of adventure in America. Her smile and parting hug were one of the few things that I vividly recall about those blurred thirty-seven minutes, as I passed from a once-familiar past into an unknown future.

What else do I remember? Keti called from Tbilisi to wish me luck; Jackie presented me with a copy of Laurie Lee’s classic As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (with ‘Midsummer’ replaced by ‘February’ – now I was up to five books…); I was the only one drinking beer, as all the others were on coffee; someone clamoured for a speech; and I was talking to my Dad when I looked at the pub clock. 11.36.

I smiled. I drained my pint. I stood. I offered my hand. I put on my rucksack. I looked around at the shocked faces, for some had truly believed that I would not stop at two pints, but would stay for another, and another. I bade them farewell and walked out of the pub. I was pulled back for a couple of hugs and photos, but I was on the road by 11.39 and I never once looked back.

Walking out of the village was cathartic. One of the first buildings I passed was our house, already so foreign, with its For Sale sign. It was no longer mine. Past Darren’s stone cottage on the left, scene of some splendid late night parties with the warmth of the inglenook fireplace; past the primary school where Sonya used to wave at break-time, as I was breaking my back in the garden; past the turn for the open fields on the right, our favourite walking route; past the antiques shop where I once trod on the family cat; past the turn for the cemetery, where I used to ponder over a young lad’s grave, the latest victim to heroin; past the tool hire shop, where I rented industrial sanders to expose the floorboards in the front room; past the village shop where I bought a paper that first Sunday morning after we had moved and had concluded, after a friendly exchange, that village life was going to agree with us; past an elderly couple in Barbours and walking boots, who greeted me cheerfully as they went off to explore the countryside; past Mick the Mechanic, driving the other way in his dark blue Escort van. Just another routine Saturday for him, I reflected, but for me this was a big goodbye to the village life, which I had come to love.

A car slowed behind me. Neighbours of mine, their pub coffee finished, offering me a lift to London. I declined, as I did when another pulled up to say they could take me as far as Oxford. Hardest to refuse was Alex in her red K-reg Polo, who was insisting that she take me all the way to Dover, my chosen port of departure. I waved them all on, for I wanted to do this myself, to close my past and start afresh.I turned right out of the village and down a country lane towards the motorway and became aware for the first time of the cold. It was a crisp winter’s morning, clear blue sky. The hedges and trees were devoid of foliage and there wasn’t a sound to be heard apart from those created by me – boot leather on tarmac, heavy breathing and some out of tune singing.

My decision to travel light had already been vindicated, for I would not have made it even this far with a full pack. I became aware for the first time of the slight (and not so slight) inclines in the road, which I had only previously traversed in a car. The uphill bits were a struggle. I realised that I was massively unfit and all those evenings of alcohol abuse were coming back to haunt me. After less than a mile, my shins began to ache, but I ploughed on. There was no way I could go back now.The village well behind me, I began to think of the minutiae of the day ahead. Berlin was the destination, although I clearly would not make it that night. I had a vague notion of sleeping on the Dover-Ostend ferry and arriving triumphantly in Berlin the next evening, creating precious space in my rucksack with the dispensing of the chocolate orange. And again the doubts set in. What if I didn’t get a lift? What if I was stuck somewhere remote at nightfall? What if? What if?

I used to hitch-hike a lot. Other people used to hitch-hike a lot. Hardly anyone does any more. This was something that I hadn’t really thought about. Hitching fifteen years ago was relatively easy, there would always be someone willing to take you, and then recount how they had spent their youth hitching, or else truck drivers wanting to tell you about what loads they were carrying. Given my recent experience with truck drivers, I had wanted to avoid them for the moment, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to be too choosy. So many people nowadays reckon that all hitchers are axe-murdering psychopaths or mentally deranged.

I am sure that I was categorised as the latter by the occupants of most of the five hundred plus cars that passed me on the motorway slip road, as I stood there, a little self-consciously and a lot cold, with my left arm outstretched. In between my hands was Vicky’s impressive orange sign. I quickly realised that it was more of a hindrance than a help, as people thought I was taking the piss. The routine was the same: driver and passenger would look with curiosity to see where I wanted to go, they would mouth the words ‘South Africa’, point, laugh and drive on. Without exception. A few would accompany the routine with some rude gesture, but none stopped. After half an hour, I was getting frostbite and was debating whether to pop back to the pub for a bowl of soup when the unthinkable happened. A car stopped.

I picked up my blue rucksack and ran the hundred or so metres to where the grubby white Ford Capri had halted and opened the passenger door. The lone occupant was a greasy-haired hippie, leather-jacket, smoking rollups and listening to some God-awful techno crap.

I’m going to Southampton. I didn’t care where he was going, I was going to freeze if I waited there much longer. Besides, I had by now mastered my lip-reading techniques for ‘South Africa.’

Sorry I can’t take you all the way to South Africa, he began, without humour (as though there was a very real chance that the next car might), but I left Southampton this morning at 2am to drive a dog to Hartlepool, and I am now on the way back and am feeling very tired. He was itching for me to ask why he was taking a dog to Hartlepool, but I am an experienced enough hitcher to know not to rise to the challenge. I have met his sort before – once you enquire into the reasons for canine transportation, you unleash a Pandora’s box and before you know it, you will be regaled with a list of Grandma’s favourite vegetables. I responded with a very neutral Right.

The thing was, it was warm in that car, I dare say comfortable if you exclude the music and the dog hair. By rights I should have got off at the Oxford turn and continued, but I was still cold as we approached and besides, I wanted a big lift to kick-start the trip. Rule Number One of Hitch-Hiking is that a big lift does not necessarily mean a good lift. I was contemplating this some hours later as darkness fell and I was being moved on by the police for illegal hitching out of Slough. Berlin tomorrow evening, you must be kidding.

I was rescued by a devout Muslim, who spent the hour we had together telling me that Allah is great. I concluded that indeed He is, since without this lift, I would have been in serious trouble. A camp German steered me round the M25, before handing me over to an insurance salesman late for his wife’s birthday party. Before I knew it, I was at Gillingham Services and it was 7pm. Seven became eight, then nine, until finally a shiny blue Vectra took pity on me.

It was driven by a bespectacled man with a Belfast accent, on his way to work in Dover. He worked for Special Branch, trying to stem the tide of illegal immigrants and, as we talked, he became more interested in my history and in my trip. He was certain that I had what it took to join Special Branch and he encouraged me to apply on my return. Although I had no intention of doing so, I shall always remember him as the first stranger to have faith in me, post-Her. Perhaps there was life after Her, after all.

The last boat was long gone, so there was little option but to spend the night in a B&B in Dover, always a lifetime ambition. I dined alone in a curry house, listening to drunken ramblings and boasts from the table next to me, and wondered if it was just the English who were this obnoxious when drunk. I wondered also if I was already yesterday’s news in the Blackbird. Wondered too what tomorrow would bring. I went to bed with a coffee and Match of the Day, hardly the exotic start to the nine-month adventure, but it felt good to be free.

The Brown Cliffs of Dover slowly disappeared out of sight on a glorious morning, and a melodramatic panic set in – would I ever return to England? Laurie Lee and I settled down to compare departure notes. He had walked out of his home in Gloucestershire some sixty years ago with little more than a violin. After various wanderings, he had found his cause in the Spanish Civil War. Would I find a cause in the ensuing months, apart from trying to find a decent beer to replace this overpriced and watered-down Stella that they were selling on the boat?

Something had happened to the weather during the crossing. The millpond at Dover had turned to a rough sea, the blue sky to a menacing grey and the chilled morning air to that hitch-hiker’s favourite, driving sleet. What the hell was I doing? I descended the ramp and kept my head down, making my way briskly to the motorway, which I knew from previous trips to be a couple of miles away. The sleet had found its way down the back of my neck, my bag was soaked, I was drenched. And miserable. It hadn’t been described in the Lonely Planet like this.

Fortunately I didn’t have long to wait as a young Belgian picked me up almost immediately. On learning my destination (I had long since dispensed with the orange sign), he proceeded to ask me questions about refugees in Africa, but I don’t think my faltering attempts in French satisfied him. He didn’t take me that far, but far enough to escape the sleet and I emerged half an hour later, drier, warmer, and in better humour, at a motorway service station. And into my first dangerous moment.

There are different ways of hitching. Most people stand at the side of the road, with thumb or sign outstretched. I prefer to engage people in conversation at petrol stations as they are refuelling, since it is more personal and gives them less chance to refuse, as well as more opportunity to judge that you are perhaps not the axe-murdering type. There were few cars about, so I made my way along to the lorry-park to ask if anyone was heading in the direction of Berlin. I was prepared to forget my aversion to hairy truck drivers in return for a good lift.

My initial scouting of the trucks centred on the number-plates. You can always tell where a German car is from by the first letters on the plate. ‘M’ for Munich, ‘B’ for Berlin and so on. I was out of luck, but I did notice a Scania with Latvian plates. Surely if I addressed the driver in Russian, he would embrace me as a Soviet brother, and take me at least some of the way? I must be in luck, because he was sat in his cabin and he had noticed me. I motioned for him to open his window.

Izvenitye, pozhaluysta, vy poyeditye v Berlin? The driver, a stocky, dishevelled, dark-skinned thug in his forties, who looked about as Latvian as Mohammed Ali, was surprised to be addressed in Russian. He opened the door, took my pack and beckoned me to enter. Placing my pack the other side of him, he looked me up and down. Now I had a better look at him, in his light blue track-suit, his breath heavy with vodka and cigarette smoke, his narrow brown eyes and unkempt hair, blackheads spread liberally on his nose. The cabin stank of stale sweat and cigarettes, the film he was watching on the small screen was a Russian hard core porn movie. He was drunk. This was a mistake. He answered in Russian:

Where are you from? How do you know Russian? What do you want? I answered that I was English, had worked as an aid worker some years ago in the Ural Mountains and was simply looking for a ride to Berlin. I had approached him as I saw from the plates that he would almost certainly be heading east. He was having none of it and he began to try and intimidate me. He explained that he was an Afghan veteran, having spent more than five years on the front following Brezhnev’s invasion in 1979; did I know how tough Afghan vets were? Did I know that he was Russian mafia? Was I from Interpol? English hitch-hikers did not turn up at lonely Belgian truck stops speaking fluent Russian and then simply ask for a ride to Berlin.

My opinion of hairy truck drivers was not improving.

The vodka was clearly having an effect and he became fixated on the fact that I was sent from Interpol to spy on him. I smiled weakly and tried to deflect the conversation. I had long ago decided that I would not stay in the cabin, even if he was going all the way to Joe’s front door. He was far too drunk and also far too psychotic. But I couldn’t just get out of the cabin, for my bag was perched the far side of him. Suddenly he grabbed me by the back of the head and pulled me close to him, so that our foreheads met. I was forced to inhale the vodka fumes as he exhaled. His eyes narrowed further and they met mine.

You are not an honest person. There is nothing simple about you. You are from Interpol. I am Russian mafia. You should be scared. Are you scared? The question was posed with a tightening of the grip on my hair. I wrested myself free, wondering whether I should point out that successful Russian mafiosi were probably not cooped up in trucks in the cold of a Belgian truck park, but decided against. I managed instead to divert the conversation to other things, away from the Interpol obsession and was just plotting my escape when he was joined by another drunken track-suited ‘mafiosi’, who viewed me with equal suspicion. I debated just getting out of the cabin and abandoning my bag, but knew that I would be less than welcome in Berlin without a chocolate orange, so stayed put.

We turned our attention to the porn video and that seemed to calm him, some parts of him, at least. He then told me that he was indeed going to Berlin and he would take me no problem. All I had to do was buy a litre of vodka and then we would drink it together before departing in a few hours. I pointed out that I needed to leave earlier than that, so would look for another lift, but would come back to him with the vodka if I failed to find anyone. There were few trucks about and there was no way that I would find a lift, he argued. Deep down I knew he was probably right, but I had to get out of this cabin. I rescued my luggage and told him I would see him in an hour. Never have the cold and the sleet, which had since caught me up, seemed so inviting.

Passing traffic was indeed light, and my chances were made slimmer by new regulations imposed by many trucking companies in the years since I last hitched: drivers were mostly forbidden to take passengers with them these days. I approached a clean-shaven Irishman as he got out to refuel. He must have felt the cold and taken pity on me, for he took me as far as Aachen. As we pulled out, I started to tell him about the Russian. He looked at me and smiled:

Vy govorite po russki? What was it about that truck stop, fluent Russian speakers all? It turns out that Seamus had spent years doing the Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan trucking routes and he regaled me with tales of banditry and fist-fights at remote borders. He told me also of how he had come to own race horses simply from driving a truck. Each ferry crossing to Ireland included a pallet of wine and more than 10,000 cigarettes of his, which he then flogged on to his mates in the pub. There were not too many places to hide his cash, but race horses, he assured me, was one. He talked also of his many conquests on his travels, but urged me to be cautious with those foreign girls:

A mate of mine came back from the Ukraine with a type of syphilis not seen in this country for twenty-six years. Imagine that! I tried not to.German traffic law prohibits trucks to drive on the autobahns on a Sunday, so Seamus had no choice but to park up until midnight near the border town of Aachen. We had got on well and I liked him immensely. He was going all the way to Munich and said he had been glad of the company.