magnetten

Sam went travelling on Saturday. And just as by far my most intensive and enjoyable writing experience of recent months was the burst of enthusiastic blogging I did in San Francisco, Sam is clearly relishing the chance to blog about the excitement of his journey. His latest post, from Vienna, is not just fascinating but actually exciting. As much as one can encounter all sorts of exciting things in one's home town, there's something altogether different about new experiences abroad - I think perhaps it's because you concentrate more, or maybe just because you're no longer in your comfort zone. Anyway, I'm getting quite excited about following Sam's travels via his blog, because if nothing else I enjoy feeling all safe while he runs into trouble with the Austrian police.

"As the first policeman bent over to examine the case more closely, I noticed the barrel of a handgun poking out from underneath his jacket, the sight of which sent an irrational shiver down me, so utterly foreign are such things to us cosseted British. I felt that the police were being a little pedantic, and was waiting for them to move on to the next carriage, when the policeman produced from the Albanian´s bag a two large metallic slabs, one the size of a paperback book, the other smaller and squarer, wrapped in some sort of tightly fitting fabric. The policeman barked something like "Magnetten?", and the Albanian, angrily grabbed for them, clearly keen that the two pieces be kept apart. The my imagination quickly darted to the cold-war thriller scenario of smuggled plutonium, kept in pieces that must be kept apart to avoid a critical reaction."