biglee

ok so i work in the music industry and i was in madrid working at summercase festival, all was well the band and tour manager had gone to the hotel to fly home the next day...me and the rest of the crew were left to go home on a 26hr journey in a hot tour bus,
we get an hour or so out of madrid and the bus decides to fill with smoke, ended up being some faulty wireing ..i fixed this in an hour or so...no problem off we went... got 10 mins up the road and the rest of the wiring i hadnt fixed went up....oh dear so we put the fire out and tried to make sense of the wiring to get us going again, whilst we were doing this a car pulled up in front of us, the passenger got out and came up to the bus door to talk to the driver, was a chap in a uniform, he showed the driver his badge and asked him to go to his car, it wasnt a police car but they were in the uniform of the spanish police, he asked for ID and his passport the driver was helpfull and gave it to him, the so called police then started to tell the driver he wanted paying or he would be arested and taken to jail, it was mentioned that it would be easy to plant drugs and wepons, the driver did question this but the guy got very upset and thretend him with being shot, so now I WAS SHITTIN it proper...anyhow to cut a story short coz its allready long enuf, they got away with just over 2000 euros and left us to our smoldering bus, when we spoke to the real police about it they were very upset and said it was a big big problem in spain at the moment, it was happening alot...the driver of the bus was taken off for statements and to look at fotos, needless to say i left the bus with the crew we got a taxi back to madrid and got the next available flight home....what a bloody nite i didnt sleep a wink...very scary...so if you have english plates on your motor and are drivin at nite in spain be very aware....

cheers for reading my rant.....oh and my poorly s1 is in fast ford this month..at the brunters mk3 thrash ....

ON-UJAH

It happened to my aunt - they took a diamond ring worth as much as a mint RS500 (it used to be my grans). They said 'you can't be wearing that here in Spain - give it to me' and he put it in the glove box, same as the rest of the cash, cards etc... The 'police' went on their merry way, leaving my aunt to drive on. After a while, she decided to check the glove box - and indeed, there was no ring or money there.

My aunt works in insurance - and of course she had failed to insure her stuff while on holidy.

Moral of the story - take out insurance when on holiday.

Homer.

Not just spain its accross europe 1 of the lads i work with was in bulgaria and this happened to him luckly he had read about this before going and wasnt fooled just kept walking away from the guy asking for his id he walked back to busy part of town and the copper quickly fooked off as he didnt want a sceen on a busy street incase the real police turned up. Sneeky fuckers and you can see why they get away with it cause you realy dont want to get in to an arguement with spanish/greek/what ever police their all seem to be quite quick to want to start a bit of

dave cos4x4

iTrader: (5)

sad isn't it, happens everywhere.

S1

Back in about '93 me and a mate drove to southern Turkey in his Renegade Jeep towing a speedboat and 10 windsurfers. We were driving through Istanbul just about to cross the bridge that joins Europe and Asia when we got stopped by the coppers. First they asked to look at our passports which they promptly stuck in their pocket. One then drew his gun and pointed it at the boat and kept saying "bang bang". At first we thought he was messing about but it soon became obvious that they wanted money before they would give us the passports back and let us go. Between us we had a fair amount of cash on us in various currencies as we had been through quite a few countries on the way. I managed to find some english without showing how much cash we had and gave it to the coppers. We were then free to go on our way. After spending a bit of time in Turkey it became obvious that its an accepted hazard that the coppers are all on the take!