When we got there, the club had a pleasant mood. It had a respectable size and gave off a serene and quiet vibe. It had some regulars, but it wasn’t particularly crowded. By the time we arrived, it had to have been around 11pm, so most of the folks had gone clubbing. Kopo moved straight to the bar and ordered a beer and a shot of Jägermeister. By the time we joined him, he was half a pint down while entertaining the landlord. He seemed to know the landlord and two barmaids because he spent some down time there with his girlfriend and alone as well.
Uglich ordered a pint of Gösser Spezial, which is proudly noted by the company as the drink served at the gala dinner at the signing of the May 15, 1955, Austrian State Treaty. I stood just at the right distance, so I could hear the banter but that the host wouldn’t ask what I wanted. I stood around for a few minutes, but for me personally, there was not much to do. I could not locate an unaccompanied girl, let alone a woman, to chat up. There were people around, but I’ve never been interested in talking to random strangers about random gossip or events. The only people I can talk to are individuals who are happy to tell me about their ideas and are happy to engage with the ones I have. Not to mention that those five quarter-pint vodka shots still had a sufficient effect on me. Apart from this, if I go to a club, which I normally don’t like to do, I don’t really care if I’m in a relationship or not. The only reason to go to a bar or club is to pull a bird and waste lodes of money. You can’t really have a decent chat or do business; it is too loud and crowded. Therefore, when I am in a relationship, I never go. If I can, I will refuse to go out with my partner. I have no beef if she goes out with her mates for a girly evening, weekend, or even a week. There is no issue with that, but I do not prefer to go out to clubs because I am just a danger there, and I will start dropping off pre-prepared little folded paper notes with my number on them. Suddenly, nature called, so I visited the lavatory, and of course, when you are young and stupid and drunk, most people get cocky or even violent. In my case, on that day, it was a bit of both. I knew that I would soon land in the big smoke, so I could not care less. Upon exiting the bogs, a padlocked door appeared in my blurry view.
I kicked the door in for fun, stupidity, and no particular reason. The force of my effort was as effective on the high-quality Yale padlock as a kiss on a dead person. The rusty, wrongly chosen screws, though, shot out of the door as if they weren’t there, and the mount with the padlock missed my temple by a quarter of an inch. Three of the screws passed my ears with supersonic speed and embedded themselves behind me in the toilet door, and one was caught by my fancy yellow tinned prescription glasses. If I had not worn glasses, just contact lenses, it would have been a different night out, possibly a very stressful afterlife. The rusty screw chipped my glasses, so I was rather uneasy, and upon this, I gave the door another kick for good measure. The door opened up, and I stood in front of something I had never seen in my life before. It was a rather small storage, maybe 4 m2, but from the bottom to the top on each side were shelves full of alcohol. Gallons of Jack Daniel’s, Ballantine, Jim Beam, Hara-kiri, Smirnoff, and Absolut Vodka, you name it; it was there! With a slight exaggeration, everything ever consumed by humanity was available for display. I am not a criminal. I have never been, and possibly never will be, but in this situation, I grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and put it down my trouser and wanted to sneak unnoticed through the bar. Kopo was telling some entertaining stories to the landlord, and they had an absolute blast. The host introduced him to Guinness Foreign Extra, which is big in Nairobi, Kenya, in certain little side road joints near the Karura Forest. Pretty big in Africa, I have been told.
Either way, just as I was a few feet away from the door, he’d seen me and said, “Hey, wait a minute, Baxxl! Where are you going? Of course, this would have raised suspicion, so I spun to retrace my path and confidently approached him with the whiskey down my pants, which I had to hold with my left hand to make sure it was not going down on my flare trousers. He put his arm around me, pulled my nape towards him and said, “Come on, Baxx, sample this! Is this the best beer you’ve ever drunk? I said: “Hold your thoughts and save me a sip, but right now, I need your car key. I have the urge to get in there. “Without asking a single question, he pulled his key out of his left jacket pocket and gave it to me. Sometimes in life, you meet a person with whom you just gel. No words needed to be said.
It was just like telepathy. He knew I was up to something, but at this moment in front of the landlord, he did not have the desire to ask questions, because he knew they would only be rhetorical. He couldn’t have had any idea why I needed his car key, but he could see from the way I came across that it was not the time to ask questions. I totally believe in telepathy. He knew I was up to something, but at this moment in front of the landlord, he did not have the desire to ask questions, because he knew they would only be rhetorical. He couldn’t have had any idea why I needed his car key, but he could see from the way I came across that it was not the time to ask questions. I totally believe this, and similar scenarios have happened to me many times in other situations and walks of life, too. I went outside and put the first bottle into the cabin of the car. While Uglich chatted with a couple of people, Kopo entertained and invited the whole bar staff, including the landlord, for shots. I thought, I’ll just go back to the storeroom and get some more, and so I did. This time I put down two bottles of Jack Daniel’s in my trousers; one was resting on my left thigh, the other on my right, and I stuck a Jim Beam and a bottle of Ballantine under my armpits. I wore a vintage but very stylish high-quality product of a jacket, which my mother’s partner ordered for measure.
It was a tailor made of superior Italian leather in the 70s. It was the coolest leather jacket I ever owned, and it came with a lot of history, which I appreciate and treasure. It fitted me perfectly well, so with the two bottles down my trousers and two under my armpits, I must have looked like the Incredible Hulk. The only difference might only have been that I wasn’t green, but completely red in the face, because of the aqua vitae my heart was pumping through my veins. I walked across the pub onto the street and I clearly remember there was a zebra crossing almost literally in front of the pub and one of the Jack Daniel’s bottles slipped down my trouser and popped in the middle of the crossing. It irked me, because I hate to waste, and since it was one of the Jack Daniel’s, it added an extra layer to my misery and pain. I added another three bottles to the cabin of the motor. I did the same run again, more or less at the same spot, and another bottle popped, this time a Jim Beam, so I became extremely irritated.
A completely discombobulated woman, a passer-by, looked at me fairly strangely as I produced a similar body posture as Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street” just after arriving in his white Lamborghini at the golf club, got out of his car, and tried to walk to make a phone call to his adviser. I could barely walk straight. I felt the bottle slighting down my leg towards my sheen, but I could do nothing effective about it because I had one on the other leg and two under my arms, embedded in my shaved armpits. I made another few trips, but on one of my trips back from the car, Uglich saw me and confronted me, saying: “What the hell are you doing, walking in and out randomly?” I asked Kopo where you were, and he just said you might poke the fire while looking at the dashboard for the radio button to tune into “Light My Fire” by The Doors. I went outside to the car, but you were not there. Neither was there a chick laying in the car in full ecstasy, so talk to me: “What have you been up to for such a long time?” Kopo saw us talking and shouted right across the bar: Where is my car key Baxx? We turned and scurried towards Kopo, who waved the bottle of Guinness Foreign Extra around like Herbert von Karajan in his heyday conducting the Berliner Philharmonics. I had no choice this time. I was at his mercy. I had to have a sip, and emptied half of the bottle of Guinness Foreign Extra, which I did not enjoy too much, because in Austria there was very little beer culture for Guinness. Although it was available, very few people drank it. I actually cannot remember seeing anyone drinking it during the 14 years I spent in Austria. We have some decent dark beers available in the country. The one that immediately triggers my mind and stimulates my taste buds is the “Ottakringer Dunkel”, of which we drank barrels worth at band rehearsals and private social gatherings, but Guinness is a completely different breed of animal.
I sent it again, and the small bottle emptied. Kopo was over the moon and back. Since I satisfied him somewhat by drinking his new favourite beverage, I got him off my back. I was relieved that he had forgotten to inquire about the car key, which was in my lapel pocket. I told Uglich, who was also under the influence, but since he had a lean purse and very little cash at his disposal, his alcohol level was substantially below ours. I hinted with my head! I showed him the broken door and filled him in, so it was eminent and crystal clear to him where all this was going and why I was so busy running around and across the pub tirelessly. He said, “Listen, this is absolutely crazy: you can’t pull them through the bar anymore, because people are getting suspicious.” This coming in and out so often must stop. He continued, “I go outside, and you put them through the little window there. I bring them to the car, so all you need to do is just keep putting those bottles through the window. “He kept running to the car, and I fed the bottle through the window. The only problem was that he could not take over four bottles with him, either. He needed to hide them under his clothes just like I did, just in case he ran into someone leaving or entering the pub. As I mentioned before, telepathy does work, and here is another prime example.
As soon as several bottles gathered in front of the small window because I was much quicker to put them out than Uglich could humanly take them, Kopo somehow realised that something was up and came and caught me with two bottles in my hand exiting the storage room, approaching the window. He didn’t need an introduction to what was going on, and since he was in on it, I said we needed someone outside because Uglich was struggling. I agree, but you go because I can barely walk, and I told the landlord that I was going to have a leak and would be right back. Now we had two people operating on the outside and one putting the bottles through the window from an ever emptying storage facility. Within a half an hour, and that includes my trips alone and Uglich’s ones as well, we emptied the cabinet completely. There were maybe a dozen bottles left of light wines like Lambrusco, essences, and soft drink juices, but not one bottle with an alcohol content higher than 17%.
What is bizarre, unbelievable, not explainable nor understandable is the fact that during this activity, not one soul walked on the main street where the pub’s entrance was, nor the mews next to the pub where the bottles came through the window. Also, not one person entered or exited the pub during this time. So, except from that one middle-aged woman in a long brown jacket two minutes into the heist where I was alone, nobody walked around on a Saturday night in an area that had quite a few bars within walking distance. Hypothetically, if one individual, seeing us while adding one and one together, could have put three young lads single-handedly into jail. For sure, we would have spent that night and the next morning in jail and would have ended up in front of a judge because this was a robbery. Yes, we were drunk, but we stole from a bar.
What makes this an even bigger deal is the fact that during this operation, from the storage to the windows, anyone who would have needed to use the female or male restroom would have caught the person who was moving the bottles from the storage to the window. Neither Kopo nor I encountered anyone. No one needed to use the lavatories in a pub for more or less than 30 minutes. Take this with a pinch of salt. Was it luck, coincidence, or destiny? Maybe it was God’s will! Nevertheless, it is totally meaningless now, but things are happening for a reason, and I believe in destiny. We didn’t even dare return. We just sat in the car, hoping that Kopo would soon come and drive us off the crime scene. He promptly appeared with a bottle of Guinness Foreign Extra in his right hand, looking like a young Alain Delon leaving a movie premiere after-party in the mid-60s. He pushed open the door and had a sip of the beer and threw it on the mews.
The bottle broke into pieces, and the left-over beer stained the asphalt brown. He lighted up a cigarette, crunching it between his teeth, put the callers of his leather jacket up, stroked through his hair, and was heading towards the car just like James Dean. With all the bottles in the boot plus me sitting in the back, his Daihatsu CX looked like a C-3 just before its final preparation for the ultimate launch. He raised a smile and asked, “Are we ready, lads? As he started the engine, “Money by Pink Floyd” came on extremely loudly, and Kopo raved the cold engine perfectly in time with the tune. He slammed the clutch and shot out of the parking lot, exercising a cavalier start with squeaking and smoky tyres. With a few μ of tyre degradation burned into the asphalt, we were on our way. On the way home, he pulled into a fuel station. Not that he could not have made it back home, but that was a sign for us to chip in. I cannot recall ever giving him a penny, to be completely honest. What I clearly remember, though, is the sad fact that at the fuel station, everybody got out of the car, and we started running around and shouting like idiots!
I remember doing some handstands and some push-ups too, while shouting like a lunatic. The people at the fuel station were completely shocked, but it seemed quite funny to them, I guess. The story does not end here, I’m afraid. I asked him to drop us off at my place instead of his because we planned Uglich was going to stay with me for the night, and we were going to go back tomorrow and pick up my car from his house. On the way to our house, he suddenly braked, but there was no reason for it as far as we could see. He reversed and drove onto the grass. A maroon BMW E12 518 was parked there, with its hood facing the road. Kopo continued to say, “I always wanted to crash into a BMW!” He reversed the CX and drove at around 3 km/h into the 518, hitting it between the passenger side front and back door. He reversed and went for it again. We arrived at home with no visible damage, neither on us nor on the car, and after exiting the car; we grabbed a couple of whiskey bottles and took them inside to celebrate the heist. We got hungry, and I offered to make scrambled eggs with fine bacon.
My mother’s fridge seemed always packed, as if someone had announced that all supermarkets would shut down for a couple of months. I sacrificed a dozen eggs. While the beacon was sizzling in the pan on the hob, I sneaked outside and removed every single bottle of the stolen goods but two, which were some sort of sweet apple type of liqueur. I suppose some stuff to do cocktails with. I hid all the bottles in the big doghouse outside, underneath the staircase, and all over the place in the garden. Kopo left after the meal, and with Uglich we had some more drinks, took all the bottles back into the house, put them onto the kitchen counter, and went to have our well-earned snooze. Around 6:30-7:00 o’clock in the morning, I hear some distant flip-flop claps rushing down the stairs. I had this basement accommodation. I had the whole area to myself. My mother burst into the room without knocking. She did not shout, because I had a guest and he was sleeping next to me in the double bed.
No gay-ish things were going on just to quench the thirst of your suspicion, but she ordered me to collect my lazy bones and immediately follow her to the ground floor. As I saw those drinks on the kitchen counter, it completely flabbergasted me, and I didn’t quite know what the hell just happened. Neither did my mother, who went on asking: Are you guys completely out of your blooming minds? Where are all these bottles from? It shocked me too, to be perfectly frank, but I could not lie to my mother. She knew right away that something was up, and it bamboozled her! I ran down to my room and said: “Uglich: Come on, wake up, man. We have an issue. ” He was not really a morning person; he just turned his head to me and said, “What, while pulling the duvet over his freckled shoulders? I said, “Listen, what is with all these drinks we stole last night? What happens if the police come to investigate? ” He said, “Just tell them, they are from your mini bar!” He went back and started snoring within seconds. Just before lunchtime and just after Uglich left, Kopo arrived at the house, saying: “So typical of you, again. As far as I remember, we took a car boot full of drinks with us, but I only found two in my car. What’s happening? ” I agree, it was not very nice of me to take all the drinks away. However, I was the mastermind, and I took out most of the drinks. When he joined the crew, only a few drinks remained for the window exit.
I do appreciate that it was his car, but I did not want to give him those drinks, because I felt they were mine, and he came plenty of times to my place but never brought a single bottle but was quite happy to sit on the crate of beers while playing my Ludwig drum set! I said every time you come to us, you are more than welcome to drink, but those drinks are going to stay here. He said, “I’m quite happy that I don’t have those drinks, because I’m expecting the police at my house soon, because this guy knows me from the bar. You can have these two bottles that you left in my car too. So I took those two bottles as well, and we drove off to his place, so I could collect my Citroën. Well, it was a silly and irresponsible night out, but no one caught us. Kopo went back there with his partner a few weeks later and, apparently, they secured the storage door with a dual padlock, and the landlord was quite happy to be entertained by him again. So nobody ever found out who actually nicked those drinks. So, in hindsight, it was one of my most memorable nights out, which I will treasure and never forget. Without a doubt, it’s in my top five!