Ballad of the Whiskey Robber

  - a true story of bank heists, ice hockey, Transylvanian pelt smuggling, moonlighting detectives and broken hearts...

Julian Rubinstein
2004, 0733620051

Not sure of provenance, I possibly bought it for Paul as a gift, otherwise maybe one of Bruno's.

I wasn't sure at first if it was really a true story and thought maybe it was a marketing spin for a novel, but it is the true tale of Attila Ambrus, a Romanian/Transylvanian escaping to Hungary for a better life in a more Western country.
He was born in 1967 and so younger than me and Bruno!

Set in the 90s, it is amazing to remember how influential the fall of the Berlin Wall was and the opening up of the Eastern bloc countries.

As well as telling the tale of Attila you get a good sense of life in Hungary and Romania at the time and some of the history of the area.

Entertaining but I just thought that if he hadn't got so drunk he would have not got caught, but I suppose it is his personality with that destructive edge to it.

If you had watched this as a film you would have thought it too far-fetched to be real!

Amazing life and he lives on and a film has been made and another book I think.

From Wikipedia, Attila Ambrus, alias The Whiskey Robber, is a Hungarian former bank robber and professional ice hockey player. He became notorious during the 1990s for committing a string of undercover "gentleman robberies" in and around Budapest, Hungary, while working a day job as a goaltender. He became infamous in Hungary as a folk hero symbolic of the times in the decade after the introduction of capitalism to the former Communist state