Slovakia Highway robber

By Franz Schulze

Coming from Bratislava on a drive to Tesin in the Czech Republic the motorway end's and turn in to an 2 lane country road but still E 75.

The road was still in a good condition except for a level railway crossing at a small place called Svrcinovec  (Don't ask me to pronounce it) For most of it's part the road is divided by a single white straight line with is of similar meaning as a double yellow line in other parts of the world. Anyway the crossing was full of potholes and to avoid some of the deeper holes I navigated around them and surely entered the opposite lane. It was about well after midnight and there was no other traffic whatsoever. Also this straight white line was not present at the actual railway crossing. Hidden somewhere was a white police Lada which instantly followed me. At first I was not aware that it was a police car since I could only see the headlights in the mirror . The road was at this stage rather curved and uphill  and my BMW loves curves but not so the Lada and driving at about the maximum permitted speed at first I thought I lost the car behind me. Only after I reached a more straight stretch of the road I realized it was a police car  behind me because now they turned on the sirens and flushing blue lights. So I pulled over and stopped . Two policeman got out and started talking to me. I do speak a few languages but unfortunately not Slovak. So my traveling companion who speak Czech continued with the conversation. One of the policeman spoke a little bit German and pointed to my license and said "falsch" (means fake) As it turned out I was supposed to have crossed (a nonexistent) white line which has a fine of 4000 (local gismos; I forgot the name, but a fairly large amount) and have to follow them to the police station in order to verify my license. Alternatively we could make a private settlement ,without received ,and they would let me off the hook. Naturally there was really no alternative than to accept the second version and 1000 Czech Crowns went in to there pocked (about $ 50.-+)  Apparently this is a very common behavior for Slovak police so anyone visiting Slovak and intend to drive a car there should exercise extreme caution.

After I finished with them and drove to the Czech boarder about 2 km away a big truck was just coming the other way, the police instantly turned on the sirens and followed the truck to stop him . Wonder what he supposed to have done wrong.