The Artist and the Moped

Its Retrospective Monday here at RCWR and as such I will attempt to regale you with a tale of my glorious past.

It was three in the morning when I awoke as the taxi slowed to a halt in the patch of wasteland next to our hostel. We were caught in a monumental Slovenian thunderstorm, the kind where you can't see more than a few meters and you have to protect your head from the painful impact of the raindrops. 

The City Worker, The Artist, the Nurse and I were coming back to the small, very industrial town of Koper on the Venetian coast, an hours drive from Trieste in Italy. We had been out on the beers in another place named Izola - the so called 'Blackpool of Slovenia', and most of us were more than a little worse for wear (particularly the Lawyer who we had lost at some point earlier in the night). The combination of beer and jet-lag (we had been up for around 26 hours at this point) had sent us all to sleep in the taxi, and in our doziness waking up, we neglected to notice that we were still about a quarter of a mile away from the hostel until it was too late and we had paid up and were getting out.

The Artist and an Old Man in Piran, Slovenia 2005

The extremely heavy rain caused us to make the decision to run as quickly as we could back to our room to avoid getting wet. the Nurse ran off first, closely followed by myself and the City worker. The Artist was considerably more drowsy  (or maybe more inebriated) than the rest of us and was slow to catch on to what we were doing. When he finally realised what was happening, he made to sprint across the road afterwards .... then BANG!

The Artist ran straight into the first of two mopeds that were coming at breakneck speed around the corner into the road where the taxi had just pulled away. Both moped and rider were thrown down the road (moped taking considerably more damage than rider). The rider got to his feet and ran to his bike trying to set back off again. But no use. The moped was well and truly trashed.

At around this time, The City Worker and I had realised what was going on, stopped running and turned back to help our mate. The Nurse had well gone (didn't notice it apparently). As I remember the two guys were off their bikes screaming in Slovenian at The Artist, who still didn't have a clue what was going on (and was completely unharmed). We ran over to where they were and coaxed the Artist into walking off and going home. At this point I think the Slovenian guys realised that we were English. They changed tactic.

"Your friend ... he come with us ... we go have drink", they kept on repeating in their best English.

"No, we're going home" we replied

"Don't worry" they said "We just have drink"

We were under the influence, but not stupid enough to fall for that one (though it wouldn't have been the first time the Artist had wandered off). And though one of the guys was pretty big (there's always a big guy), there were three of us and only two of them. They grabbed the Artist by the arm and tried to pull him away (he was just swaying at this point), as we grabbed the other and pulled him back in the other direction like a kind of Christmas cracker, and tried to walk off. Every time we did, they would come back and grab his arm again and pull him away again. This wasn't working and the Slovenians were getting more and more irate.

What happened next was the most hysterical, poorly co-ordinated comedy of a fight that it wouldn't have looked out of place in a Charlie Chaplain movie. The two guys came at The City Worker and I (who were honestly just trying to get away with our friend in one piece), and we defended ourselves. I think at one point The Artist was on the floor and being kicked whilst the City Worker and I tried to pull them away. 

I remember attempting to throw some punches, but I was pretty hammered and I don't think any of them hit anyone, and The City Worker did the same.  When finally we managed to get the Artist away and run back to our hostel, the good thing about this, and about us being so drunk was that none of us really got hurt. The Artist had some cuts and bruises, a torn T-shirt (his favourite apparently) and wounded pride, but that was it. I myself have one clear and embarrassing memory of the injury that I sustained that night.

I remember clearly standing there, about 15 feet away from our assailants, not moving ... just standing. Then, completely randomly - falling backward for no other reason than my drunkenness (and gravity) onto my backside and scraping all the skin off by elbow on the hard concrete.

Only when we got back to the room and thought about it for a bit, did we realise ... the guys on the moped were completely off their faces too, and that was - in fact the only reason why we didn't get killed (despite the fact it was three to two) as we were essentially as much collective use as half a person.

The police cars turned up around 2 minutes after we left the scene to apprehend the Slovenian guys. The Artist told us his tales of the extreme dislike of the Slovenian police for British tourists - a lucky escape. I always felt sorry for those guys, to whom the cost of a moped must have been extremely high, we probably would have offered to pay some money if they had been reasonable. I still can't understand how the police never came to the hostel considering they must have heard the accusations of the Slovenian pair, and we were at the only hostel in the entire town.

(sorry Mum)