TRAVEL. EUROPE
Backpacker Gets Arrested in Small Town in Poland
Gives police an expired residency card
** Republished from 2016 **
Nowhere in my wildest dreams had pinned me in the back of a Polish police car during the first hour of April in 2016, but that’s exactly where I was. And honestly, I was not near as scared as I should have been looking back on it.
I was visiting my Polish friend, Adam, who lives in Poznan, Poland. I had been there for three days prior to this moment and was starting to get comfortable with my surroundings. We had been invited to a birthday party of a girl we had met the night before. Not knowing anyone at the party we were about to go to, we planned on relying on alcohol as our form of confidence.
As we sat in Adam’s flat and drank some beers and planned out our night, I asked Adam if it was allowed to carry an open beer in Poznan in public. He replied, “Not legal, but hardly illegal.” What he meant by this was that he had never been questioned about it in his entire life.
Sure enough, that was enough of a jinx to get the police’s attention as we walked past their car pulled over on a side street neighborhood. It was midnight. They called us over to their window. They first asked if we spoke Polish. Adam lied. So for the…
