We were hitchhiking around Europe.

In Hungary we got picked up by a gay gypsy traveling hypnotist and snake charmer in his pink volkswagen van with tiger-skin interior.

We were on our way to Vienna, but instead ended up spending 4 weeks with him traveling around Romania and Balkans, hanging out with gypsies, performing with him in villages, and running from Albanian mafia.

Gypsies were the most fun-loving, hospitable, warm and unethical people I ever met. It was an amazing experience overall. But one story stands out.

We were performing next to Gnjilane, a small city in Kosovo. As part of his performance, this guy would hypnotize a member of public and, among other things, ask them to kiss him while hypnotized. Well, something went wrong with the hypnosis and this gorgeous, young, girl instead of kissing him exclaimed that she can only kiss Adnan.

The problem was, Adnan was not her husband. He was a guy from the enemy tribe/group/village. Suddenly a massive brawl erupted. People pulled out knives, some even guns. Bottles started flying. I saw at least two people getting stabbed.

We were in the corner of the pub, scared shitless, waiting for things to calm down. Few minutes into the brawl, we even looked at each other encouragingly. It looked like we might even survive it. And then, like on a command, everybody stopped fighting and started looking at us. Somehow, they all decided at the same time that we are the real cause of the problem and that we need to be punished. We started running, followed by about 50 armed albanians decided to kill us. We managed to get into our van and then had a high speed pursuit. Pink volkswagen van followed by several huge old Mercedes.

Somehow we managed to escape. We then spent next 10 days avoiding albanians, being helped by gypsies, sneaking across a border through some small roads... Until we managed to get on a plane in Bulgaria and get the fuck out out of that whole crazy part of the world