Excerpt from: The Rare Earth Series, Volume Two: Trading Dangerously - Import-Export and a Little Thievery
Some of my dealings in the grey market and black market of the pre and post Berlin Wall Fall era in Eastern Europe have already been described in some detail. This story describes my last trip to the former Soviet Union to do a deal.
In what should have been a simple transaction between a small Polish trading company and a Ukrainian state satellite dish manufacturer in 1993, my trip to the Ukraine to carry out the purchase gets complicated. Sexual escapades in the train(not my own but I was strangely involved, nonetheless), a near diplomatic row with Ukrainian border guards, missing my contact in Ternopol, and a drunken factory director made this business trip quite memorable. It ends with a hospital stay in Przemysl as I barely make it back to Poland alive, poisoned by methyl alcohol during a party to celebrate inking the transaction. Other parts of this story include a near kidnapping, a rape, and garlic mashed potatoes - the only food I ate for ten days.
The goods to be bought and sold in the West, six foot diameter satellite dish antennas used to monitor Western television transmissions from countries surrounding the vast Soviet Union, looked more like huge woks made for a big chinese stir fry party. What we found in the factory and what happened during our visit will also be described.
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