Did I mention the time...

 I was traveling through Eastern Europe with friends and colleagues.

We were in East Germany when things went wrong.

I had been visiting libraries and museums for a research project.

The others were university students and journalist just making a trip in the pre soviet collapse.

Safety in numbers and cheaper in those days of few credit cards.

Anyways, we were in that rebuilt city of Dresden which was bombed to bad it had to be completely rebuilt.

It was famous for clock makers and other types of specialized crafts size as ceramic dolls.

We all had our own interest but were careful not to get the other sin trouble.

I had already had to remove the magazines my mother had put inside my luggage.

Also, no bibles were allowed which some of the Catholic ones were having difficulty.

A book seller tried to hand me a Koran!

It said HOLY on the outside, but I recognized it as not a bible.

It took a while to discover but there was a a note for me, and it was simply inserted into the first book.

It appears i was being warned of an imminent arrest. 

One of my groups had turned me in for something. 

It was a common enough occurrence. 

The German Secret Police were feared by everyone, and some said even the KGB kept out of their way if not on their own turf.

I was calmly sitting under a tree in a courtyard where everyone had thrown their backpacks down waiting for the return of the others.

One of the issues when traveling, who sat with the bags and who did not return on time.

I was approached by a big angry guy and then all hell broke loose.

I was arrested for having subversive material.

They thought I had accepted a Bible.

It seems the book had been inserted into my backpack despite my decline.

Except it was not my backpack. 

I was arrested and put on trial.

I did spend some short time inside their jail.

They denied it afterwards.

But it had made the front page of the New York Times.

A group of American tourists being held over the contents of one of their bags.

I had a visitor the first evening and she did not know to have a needle.

I quickly exchanged places with her or at least twisted her arm and the needle hit her instead.

When I went for help, I found no one was anywhere near me at all.

I understand the woman had a baby nine months later.

It appears those jails are not much safer than the American ones back at home.

I got lost and was found at daybreak still inside but just sitting and waiting for my hearing.

I had no idea of the lot of the woman I fled and then could not find any help.

Escape would have meant the end for my group and I had assumed their would be an American diplomat on hand the next day.

As it was most of the group were forced to go to the border but then detained seperate from myself.

I was being put on trail for bible material that would destroy the minds of the youth of Germany.

The book turned out to be a Koran and in a language I could not understand.

Most women are not taught this language.

The big guys name was Beer truck, everyone thought it funny.

It appears to have been his real name, Bierwagen.

His companion at trail was the local KGB official.

Mr. Putin.

An Unknown to most unless one had a relative from Saint Petersburg who worked at the Hermitage.

They used to gossip something terrible about all the really good-looking young men.

The old ladies knew all of their families and little girls visiting got an earful.

Apparently, I had missed my interrogation the night before.

The KGB man was not interested in detaining a large group of tourists and was very adamant about the charges.

The poor German SS took out the suspect book and opened it to be not a Bible but something much worse.

Really, I was going to teach them all to be good Muslims and lay down their arms?

At the time Muslims were seen as peaceable and not harmful to society.

Except for the multiple women and insistence on acquiring a newer wife.

Someone was not amused and he had a wife to go home to with two small girls.

What was this!

Nothing!

A waste of time!

On and on the two of them argued.

While I was hoping not to get another night in the jailhouse.

I did of course and almost get a whole lot more.

A group of librarians took up my cause and invited me to their castle where they were curators of the old books.

Whoever they were, they had clout and I was safely tucked away somewhere else for the night?

The next day, my would be tattle teller had made a ful confession.

She had been following me around and had a full report of my subversive measures.

I was a protestant religion of several different faiths from the same family and was more careful than most not to associate openly with anyone.

I did not want to be considered an espionage agent as I was promised a career as a journalist as my grandmother had been one of the first radio announcers and had also done interviews during the wwii.

I was however doing research for a translator who had not entrusted me with what he was working on just what to look at, simple stuff.

Fear gripped me, what if I was working on something I did not know about?

Wendy was her name and she was an old foe.

How she had found me in Germany was a wonder as a convict she was not allowed to travel outside the united states.

Her testimony had been done in secret and behind closed doors. 

The tape of it was being played a little too loudly and through an open window.

Hmm, suspicious and more suspicious ones than myself.

Well, in the end, the confrontation came over my backpack which was not mine and the secret police watching me due to this woman who wanted me not to come back home to America.

In the end, he upended my backpack by mistake so everyone could see the contents.

Oops, instead of sanitary napkins or tampons it was more of the male sort of toiletries.

An amused Putin asked him if he thought I shaved, I was still young enough and not unattractive.

He was more than embarrassed, especially when one of the guys yelled.

Hey that is my bag, what were you doing with it!

I was just sitting there waiting for everyone's return.

And my bag had gone missing as usual.

The American Cavalry had arrived.

As soon as the young man acknowledged the bag, the swooped.

Not another arrest.

The Germans had made a mistake.

Let it go, the girls belongings had been stolen and she had no issues with the police.

Grumbling revenge, Bierwagen reluctantly was forced to give in.

Mr. Putin was removed from Dresden almost immediately afterwards.

He became the Deputy Mayor of Leningrad.

A raise in stature? or a disownment? 

It is hard to tell in the old Soviet days, where envy ruled more than reason.

The young man had a photographer mother who knew a lot of people!

I also am a Manhattan project grandchild, which why I was extra careful not to disclose anything.

Grandpa died shortly afterwards, wondering one more time what they thought they were working on in that laboratory.

I did get my career but so did the other guy who seemed to have thought I was out to get him.

I got too old and had to care for my dementia mother after my father was murdered.

I grew up when i was little with two greatgrandmothers still alive.

Three grandfathers, as one of my grandmothers had died when my father was three weeks old and her brother took over his raising while the young guy worked on his test tubes or whatever.

He was a Navy man who spent fifty years at sea before retiring.

And my one grandmother as well as a set of parents who did not know to marry and then be miserable.

If it had not been for the stalker Jimmy and his crew, we might all have made it through.

Instead the cousins who survived wwii finaly dispersed.

And the younger ones were tossed out to the far corners to get them out of the way.

While Jimmy got to have his fun and his women have had a full time in testifying against me.

Just the other day I picked something off a shelve and then decided not to buy it.

I put it where everyone else puts thiers at the lineup shelves and not inside my purse.

I heard a woman talking about me and did not listen but understood afterwards that she was reporting me in America for having not paid for something I had not bought.

Anyways, I ran into Mr. Bierwagen again.

He had not changed a bit; except he had a Chinese wife.

They had just come back from Costa Rica where they had been Christian Missionaries.

He followed me home and never forgot me despite being told to leave it alone.

He said he was an elder in my religion.

And he had me put out on the street on a trumped-up charge.

Lying!

How can one verify that?

I don't even know what particular lie I did not tell.

There was no hearing this time nor any mercy.

His wife had also removed the new clothes from my closet as she needed them.

I had lost weight to size zero, turns out I have a nodule on my thyroid and now am slightly larger than normal with no amount of dieting, starving or exercise to eliminate four quarantines of doing nothing at all for two weeks inside a single room. 

Do you think they survived the CVD19?

They were traveling to China.

One can only hope.

The young lady in Moscow can almost be seen as a monkey in a cage.

To put it bluntly.

She is so much taller than her jailors it is ridicoulous.

The glass cage is much smaller than usual.

After all, Peter the Great was over seven feet tall.

And it is not unknown for Vikings and the Russ to be very large and very, very tall.

Six foot nine is not overly tall, especially for a prison setting.

Those are really small guards, I guess she is not considered a threat.

Her story is while packing she threw in someone else paraphernalia.

That happens, or it was inserted.

It is assumed she was a drug tested and came back negative.

Therefore, she has not choice but to tell the truth she believes in or continue making a plausible story.

In any way it works out to ten years in prison.

How she was chosen, one can only imagine.

A millionaire sports athlete in the twenty-first century post Soviets.

One does wonder. 

I was more the caught bear held up for laughter, tied to a pole for everyone to see.

Caged animals are not victims, they just bide their time for release.

Perhaps she will make it out on an exchange.

It turns out i was working for a man who was translating the Bible.

Something I did not know when I was arrested for having a Bible in my possession.

He has since died, but his new work was published having worked on it some fifty years.

He was a Rhodes Scholar who had gone blind.

He had trained me how to do research and I thought little of it at the time as to what I was working on.

At least it was not a bomb, just some old works in glass exhibit cages. 

Nothing to worry about, not doing anyone any harm....