The Kidnapping

Everyone warned him not to go. Me. His contact person. Even the head of our program said, "Do not go to the Ukraine without a Hungarian."
But he didn't listen.

Back in 2006, I joined a teaching program by the name of CETP - Central European Teaching Program. At the orientation in August, I met a fellow American, whose name I will not mention in this blog.

As it happened, he was moving to the same town where I'd been living with my parents the past nine months, and would only be thirty minutes from the new town where I would be moving. It wasn't long before we became pals, and we saw each other often enough, that it was more unusual not to see each other or hear from each other on the weekends. And so it happened, one weekend, that I did not hear from him. And in fact, I didn't hear from him for almost two weeks. This concerned me a bit, had me anxious and I even went so far as contacting our program leader, to find out if she'd heard from him. She had. And it wasn't until a month later, that I found out from the horse's mouth, just what had happened to him.

Being the cowboy that he is from Texas, he decided one day to go to the Ukraine on his own. Being a man, and a Texan at that, he figured that this would be enough of a shield for him to take care of himself. He was wrong.
He got up to drinking, the night before it all happened. Before the whole saga of the following day would occur. A bit of Mardi-Gras if you will, before the penance.
And so, stumbling into the lobby bar of his hotel at a solid hour of eleven the following morning, after the drinking fest, he found himself at the bar stool, chatting with the cute waitress.
Just then three Ukrainian thug-like men came into the bar as well. They made eye contact with the waitress, but it was only in hindsight that he saw this.
They walked over to the bar,
"Hello! Ver are you from?" They asked in a sounding tone.
"I'm American." Eh! Mistake number one. He continued meekly,
"But I live in Hungary."
"Ahhhhh! You are American! Come! Vee buy you drink! You like wodka?"
He accepted the strangers' gesture and began drinking with the three friendly men for a good hour. Enough time to slide back into the groove of the night before.
"Do you like gurls?" One of them asked coyly.
He smiled, and probably blushed.
"Well, yeah. Sure." He responded, unprepared for their next question.
"If you vant, vee can find you nice, not expensive gurl." He put his hands up in defense,
"Oh no...that's okay. I'm not interested in that kind of..."
"Okay. Okay. No problem. No problem. Vee find you nice gurl, yeah?" He nodded in agreement.
"Yeah okay. That sounds fine." Yes, put your love match-making prospective in the hands of three kindhearted Ukrainian mobsters.
They patted him on the back, and led him outside to their...van. Eh! Mistake number two. He got in. Eh! Mistake number three.
They slid the door closed, and while one mobster sat to his right, the other sat across from him, being that there were benches in the back. The third, obviously drove. And while driving, the third musketeer would periodically slam on the breaks. Because this would in turn force the other two rascals in the back to fall upon our hero, he decided upon later assessment that this must have been in order to pat him down to make sure he wasn't carrying any weapons.

They continued to pass bar after bar. Mr. America would ask why they weren't stopping at any of these bars to which they would find some excuse. Either it wasn't open, it wasn't very good, or there were no girls in there - they came up with anything under the sun.

Now, they were in the woods. Deep in the forest, one of them took out a knife, and flashed it before our hero's eyes. He forced him to hand over his camera. His very nice, expensive, professional camera. Then he commanded that he hand over his wallet. The mobster started rooting through it. He threw out card after card, looking for something of value. He picked up his Visa, and asked, "Does this have money on it?" to which the victim replied, "Only in America." The gangster through the card at the babe in woods, and was able to save at least this, if not his camera. The gangster then proceeded to steal his phone, all his money and...his American library card.
He gave back the passport (apparently the mobster was dangerous but not terribly bright, as American passports go for big money over on the eastern block) and then proceeded to open the sliding door, and kick our hero literally in the ass, until he fell on his face onto the ground.

The van sped off, and left the poor, now penniless American stranded in the Ukrainian wood.

At this same time, I was on the phone to a mutual friend of ours, asking if she'd heard from him. When she said no, I offered, "Gee-wizz. I hope he wasn't kidnapped."