One day during my holidays in 2003 I was walking with my friends in the mountains on the border between Poland and Czech Republic. We went down to shop at the border crossing to buy some drinks. That was on Jakuszyce-Harrachov crossing (if anybody knows that place - its road from Jelenia Góra towards Prague, narrow and bendy mountain road).
It was lazy summer afternoon. There was almost no traffic on the road (as is usually not too busy). We were sitting outside the shop, drinking some beer and there we noticed some terrible noise. We were looking arround and then we spotted two columns of black smoke going from above the forrest. Soon the Kamaz lorry appeared from behind the bend on the Czech side - its step hill up towards Poland there.
Kamaz was similar to that one, very old and rusty in dark-green military color:
But it was tractor, towing a trailer. You never seen trailer like that before, I think. It was homemade trailer. That was long container welded to the grate with brake and power cables mounted to it using a sticker-tape and rope. Both trailer and tractor had old, soviet number plates (black with white russian letters) and blue “TIR” sign. Under the grate was wooden crate with some doors from old fridge, closed with a chain and a lock.
Driver soon approached a barier and then stopped. He was keeping his vehicle on the main brake for long, and after maybe one minute he start to do something. Many sounds were heard - some fizzles, knocks and other strange sounds. At last, he finished, took his leg from brake pedal and opened the doors.
He was an asian men, maybe 1.60 m tall. He were wearing leather jacket (altough it was summer and was almost 30 degree), trousers from track suit in violet, light green and yellow colours, white wooden clogs and transparent netting shirt. He had heavy gold chain and gold watch. He was looking as someone, who was stoned, or who haven’t sleep for about 60 hours. He were still sniffing his nose as someone who have hay-fever.
He started to climb down from his lorry. He were making this very slow. One step… Second step… Third step… Then he realised, that ground is moving - lorry started to roll down, back to Czech Republic. It took him dozen of seconds to realize what’s going on. He then climbed back to the cab, sit down and put brakes again. Then he were sitting for some time, propably thinking what to do. He then started to make all this strange sounds again and then put off his leg from brake pedal again. He opened the doors and looked down - ground was moving again.
It took him some time to think before he started to move again, so he rolled back about 20 metres. I don’t know why, but it werent any czech border officers on duty at the moment. Polish ones, quite shocked, were watching this scene from behind the bareer. Russian guy started to think very hard. After maybe two minutes of being halted on brakes he looked that he got some idea. He started his engine (it started after fifth or sixth try) and reversed another 10 or 15 metres. Then he drived forward and when lorry were moving he jumped off, opened the lock and the crate under the trailer (in this time lorry stopped and started to roll back again) and then he took off some chocks from there and pulled them under the wheeels. At least, lorry was parked safely. He looked on us and he looked very pride of himself, but it was clean that he were used to do this trick many times before.
He climbed to his cab then and he started digging for paperwork. He lleft the doors open, so we had opportunity to see inside. I had never seen such mess before and after. Half eaten food mixed with oily rags and tools, plenty of rubbish and some rusty pieces of metal… After a while he found this paperwork (it was all dirty and creased), he got off the cab and he walked to the border officers. In halfway to them he stopped and he cleaned his nose into it !!!
That was disgusting. We all decided to no longer watch this scene and went away. But I never forgot this guy. I bet that they will not get him into Poland - this lorry looks to have last MOT done about 25 years ago…
Have you ever seen some scenes similar to that one?
