Bratislava Polizei

Last night was Yemi's first game. They won! They actually blew them out the water;) I loved watching Yemi play again and the fans here are crazy as usual. The arena is on the smaller side, it holds about 1,000 but it gets packed. He's the only American on the team but we were told another point guard from home comes tomorrow. You can check out his team website with this link. I don't think they have his info up yet but if you use google translator you can find out more information about the team. After the game we went to a nice restaurant that makes their own wine, it's really nice here because things like food are really cheap, compared to other places I have been in Europe. The wine was amazing! And I got my first regular nights sleep here so that was awesome. I got our hotel website too so if you are curious where we are staying you can see some really good pics @ www.penzionpezinok.sk

Ok, so I know I promised pics and I took some but I had to tell this story first: Yemi had today off so we went into the capital. It was a really nice ride and we're only about 15 minutes away here in Pezinok. Beautiful day as well, about 75 degrees, nice breeze; not a cloud in the sky. We went to the mall and I got a much needed curling iron and blow drier with the euro outlet plug. Yemi doesn't let me plug mine into the transformer after some bad experiences with fuses blowing out, oops;) To begin with the driving is confusing another classic example of a city built before there were cars and then they threw roads in as an after thought. Charming, but super inconvenient, no real grid or anything. We're on our way back to Pezinok and we pass over a railroad, it had the gates that come down but they were up; it had sign with red blinking lights but we just thought it meant caution...boy were we wrong.

We drive through the train tracks and as we continue on we're pulled over by the Slovakian police. They way the were set up it looked like a routine stop so initially we weren't worried. They came up to the car, not a lick of english and us not a lick of Slovak so you can imagine our communication. They call someone on their cell phone and give it to Yemi. Yemi says "hello?" the man says "no hello! you passed a blinking red light on the railroad and for this there is a penalty now give the phone back to my colleague." So the guy writes on a pad of paper (its not carbon copy) 150 euro, and says "this penalty" we say "ok" and put out a hand to take the 'ticket', he says "no you pay now" we say we have no money (this is all w/ hand gestures) he says "bank card" we say "2 days here, no card" he says "ok 50 euro?" Now tell me this isn't getting a little fishy. We say "we don't have" and show him all our cash which was 10 euro and some coins. They shake their head in disapproval, waive us off, and go back to their police car. At this point Yemi and I are in complete shock. These "police" were just trying to hustle us out of money! There was no ticket; they didn't take down any information...Wow at least for a little bit I won't be driving by myself. We still have to talk to someone who speaks english about the experience. I don't know if thats normal or what, definitely left a smudge on my current opinions of Slovakia.