May 1995

The last months of our graphic school before we were supposed to graduate. And what's nicer to end a period like that than with visiting the DRUPA, one of Europe's biggest graphic expos?
Nothing, we thought, so through school we (me and three of my friends) ordered entrance tickets for three days to visit the graphic expo in Düsseldorf, Germany. We went with cars and two tents and found ourselves a nice and quiet, not too expensive camping site not too far away from the "Messe", the expo-buildings.
We spent the first day walking around on the expo, checking out all the new things in the graphic branche and afterwards we went downtown to have some dinner.
We couldn't make it all that late, since we planned to get up early again the next morning to go back to the expo. So after dinner we went straight back to the camping place, had a little chat still, but went to bed in time.
I woke up, startled, with an incredible noise just outside our tent. I'm a pretty tight sleeper, so I guess it'd been going on for awhile already before it woke me up, which pretty much shows that it was quite some noise. And my friend who was sleeping in the same tent already sat straight up, bewildered look on his face, also *g*
We got out of the tent with sleepy faces and checked where the sound came from. The guys in the tent on our left side were also getting out of their tent, probably with the same intentions as we had.
And right next to our tent there had come a couple of German guys, probably really early in the morning, because they hadn't been there the night before when we went to bed.
They'd put their(?) car, a BMW 3 series, one of the more expensive versions, with its back on two crates so that the wheels were off the ground and they'd put something on the gas pedal. The engine was running on max rotations per minute, with no resistance on the back wheels, so the engine was screaming! Almost audibly screaming for help. And the guys were standing there with cans of beer in their hands and just laughing.
We all looked at eachother, shaking our heads, and probably thinking the same thing simultaneously: "that car is stolen, because no one would ever do that to his/her own car and especially not when it's an expensive car like a BMW 3 series." But well... What could we do... We didn't really dare to say anything, because those guys were so drunk that they were far from predictable any longer.
We got back in our tents, got dressed and prepared breakfast, with that engine still screaming.
At the time we were about to take the first bites of our breakfast we heard a enormous bang when the engine of the BMW blew. It had finally given up and was saved from further suffering.
The bang was followed by applause and cheering of the guys.
Meanwhile we were wondering how many those guys had "murdered" already...