Treasures of the Amazon : Paul & Harald's Wild Ride

Before I start, I need to make one thing clear: I'm not a hero.

I was born in a shithole called Bremen. I left as soon as I could and ended up living in an even shittier town in Bavaria called Munich. I wanted to be nowhere near the place where I grew up, but for the last decade my life has been spent on the road and in planes going from place to place.

I ran away from home because my father beat me nearly every day of my childhood, which is why I became a mechanic. When you grow up with nothing but chipped teeth and bruises, you learn to fix things real quick. You find new ways to get high and you learn how to pick pockets and break into people's homes. You lie about everything you can't fix and sell yourself for what you can fix.

In my early twenties, I fell into a bad crowd - maybe we're all bad crowds when you think about it - but this group of friends were more than just trouble-makers. They were dangerous and stupid, but there was something about them that drew me in. Back then, I didn't know that they were running drugs from the Netherlands to Munich back alleys like some kind of modern-day Dukes of Hazzard or whatever movie it was that those guys watched incessantly at their local dive bar.

We were small time, though; we tried our best to live like kings on the money we earned from selling powdery white rocks in paper bags to dumber people than us who bought it thinking they were buying some kind of high quality cocaine or something else worth having in your life. Nowadays it's easier said than done, but if you want to buy heroin these days, you don't need any connections or anything like that; all you need is cash and a phone number written down on a crumpled bit of paper somewhere deep inside your pocket. It wasn't like that back then though; we had runners heading over the border every week picking up product from some dealer who thought he was smarter than he actually was. We'd have to wait for our guy in Amsterdam to call back with an address for a drop, which would probably turn out being either his house or a park bench depending on how many people he trusted enough with his stash. There was no easy way into buying drugs back then unless you wanted weed or coke because even though anyone can buy those nowadays without much problem, back then it took more time and effort to get them than it did heroin or speed or whatever else we were trying to sell each other at our little parties once we were bored with beating ourselves up while listening to music so loud that nobody could hear themselves think anymore.

It was during one of these parties one cold winter night that things went sour for me. My buddies started getting antsy when they heard on the news that one of their 'suppliers' had just been arrested along with his buddy after being caught with a whole bunch of shit on his person at the train station by a couple police officers looking for someone else entirely. Suddenly, everyone was paranoid; everyone figured they'd be next the next time they needed a fix, so someone started talking about how we should go visit our other guy in Dresden while he still had some stuff left over from what he usually sold us (because he didn't trust us). Everyone agreed pretty quickly - except me - because they knew that if they said no, they would get death glares thrown their way until they changed their mind anyway or decided to leave quietly instead of causing problems at someone else's house with strangers inside who might not want them there anymore if they got upset enough. As far as they were concerned though, I was always the easiest person to manipulate; after all, what did I have left? My life? What life? All I had ever known was barely scraping by from one day to the next living paycheck-to-paycheck working as hard as I could repairing cars for people who didn't care about me as long as their car got fixed on time and for cheap enough so that they wouldn't have any reason to complain about it too much once everything was said and done; if anything good ever happened to me again after leaving home, it wasn't something anyone would have noticed because it didn't take long before everyone around me found themselves in similar situations where we learned early on not to trust anybody but ourselves anyway.

One thing led to another as usual - everybody trying their best not to look like arseholes while having a few drinks too many - until finally I found myself with four others making our way towards Saxony in two cars driving behind each other in case the first car broke down somewhere along the way and we needed backup considering how many hands each car had wrapped around its steering wheel while being driven by whoever felt most confident behind the wheel at any given moment while driving through various German states trying not to get pulled over by cops whose lives weren't worth a dime