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Botching the Booty in Bergen

DW staff (win)June 17, 2005

Consulting a map sometimes comes in quite handy, especially when trying to smuggle large quantities of illegal substances across Europe, as one woman recently found out on Germany's largest island.

Rügen's Bergen is also near the water but way further southImage: Museum-Prora

When talking about Bergen, most people would probably think of Norway's second-largest city. Bergen in New Jersey also comes to mind. But a 44-year-old woman with 843 grams (30 ounces) of heroin hidden in the hollow heels of her boots managed to think of a third option.

There's another Bergen, on the German island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea. When the Spanish drug smuggler was told to deliver her goods to, well, Bergen, she booked a train ticket to northern Germany. When she arrived there and called her contacts, they told her that they were waiting for her much further north in Norway.

These houses stand in Bergen. The one in Norway, not the one on Rügen.Image: dpa

She got back on a train and was on her way to Copenhagen when customs officials got suspicious after they saw her ticket from Bergen (Rügen) to Bergen (Norway). That was the end of that drug smuggling trip.

The woman should have probably known better: After all, she's already spent two years in Scandinavian prisons for drug smuggling.

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