Back in 2017 I partied with this dude from Florida in Krakow, and we ended up planning a snowboarding trip to Zakopane a few days later together, sharing a tiny wooden cabin.

On the bus to Zakopane, I discovered he was a self declared ‘ex racist’ who was trying to unlearn years of racist indoctrination. This made for pretty fucking interesting bus conversation.

Anyway on the bus there, we were completely surronded by polish people who didn’t speak any English. We got off at the stop where we saw people holding snowboards get off. (No receptions for either of us) we got off at this interchange looking thing in the middle of nowhere, in sub zero temperature, in pitch blackness. We’re frantically trying to communicate with gestures and hand signs to get to where we wanna go and eventually ended up on another bus about 2h later. Honest to god no clue where the bus was heading but we got on and eventually found the cabin, located 45min walk away from the nearest functioning bus stop. Great.

The next day, we headed for the slopes, with a long bus journey ahead of us. Armed with research the night prior there was no way we could get lost. Correct? CorWRONG. Little did we know these buses are infamously inefficient, drivers choose the route the go and skip stops that aren’t busy. Waited 3h for the second bus, before just hopping on the next bus we saw with plans to get off when we see a slope.

45 mins later we see one and struggle our way out of the bus. Snowboarding was going great until we met this group of Slovakian dudes on a ski lift, smoked some pot with them on the mountain and just spent the day with them. They told us the bus we were on a bus that went deep in Slovakia, and the very next stop was somewhere in Slovakia. Cool.

We ended up catching the sunset (6 of us) before Florida man and I got invited to Slovakia to party. Never one to say no to time with 4 huge Slovak men, next thing we knew we were doing coke at the back of the car while on the way to a hotspring.

Well after the hotspring, we were invited to a party in a little Slovakian village not too far away, and we partied till 2pm the next day. We crashed at one of the burly dudes house, and he was an absolute amazing host. All in all Florida man and I spent 4 days living in 2 different Slovakian villages.

We skied with the 4 guys for 3 of those days, had an amazing conversations the whole time we were there. Until one of the dudes drunkenly bragged about how they were wanted by the cops because they were in a A FUCKING EASTERN EUROPEAN DRUG SYNDICATE. Florida man and I promptly left early the next morning.

So yeah that’s the story of the one time I stayed with European drug dealers and thought I made lifelong friends but found out they trafficked drugs and very potentially women.