About $2,500 It's late 1990's, I'm getting shitfaced in what I thought was just a strip club in Vienna, Austria. Drinking for a while, running a bar tab on my credit card. Dancer comes over to drink with me and we polish off a couple of bottles of champagne at the bar. Unbeknownst to drunken and oblivious me, it was really a brothel. Next thing I know/recall (the latter part of the evening was a bit of a blur), I'm in some back bedroom having stupid drunken sloppy sex with her. Fortunately I was in my 20's at the time and could still rise to the occasion with that much booze in me. Anyway, I finish up and the reality of what the fuck just happened begins to penetrate my drunken haze. Time to get outta there. I go to leave and the girl is literally hanging on my arm as I'm trying to make my way to the exit, begging me to take her away from the place. Fear begins to set in as the large, tracksuit-wearing, Eastern European gangster type security guy blocks my exit, asking me in his large, tracksuit-wearing, Eastern European gangster type security guy accent what I'm doing to the girl. I explain with all drunken sincerity that I'm not doing anything to her, not looking for any trouble, and only trying to leave. He accepts that, and separates her from my arm. I leave and stumble back to my hotel.
Next morning I'm recovering from the night before and find my credit card receipt. Holy shit. Apparently I'm not so good at calculating the Schilling-to-Dollar exchange rate when I'm hammered and horny. In my defense it was pre-Euro and all the different exchange rates in Europe were very confusing. So I'm hung over in my hotel room, wallowing in regret over blowing that much money last night, and my hotel room phone rings. Who the fuck could that be? None of my family, friends, or co-workers know I'm staying at this place. Is it the front desk calling because I made a drunken scene in the lobby when I got back in the middle of the night? Did I vomit in the elevator, perhaps? Out of curiosity I answer it. Holy shit again, it's the girl from last night's brothel. She's again begging me to take her away from there and with me to my next destination in Europe. I guess I told her my name (or she got that off my card), where I was staying and my further travel plans. Oof. I felt really bad for her because she seemed like she was desperate for my help in fleeing some unfortunate circumstances. But sober me wasn't about to get on the bad side of any large, tracksuit-wearing, Eastern European gangster type security guys by absconding with their girl, so I politely declined and got her off the phone.
The credit card bill is long paid off, but to this day I still have flashbacks of her hanging on my arm whenever I watch the Liam Neeson movie Taken, and I wonder if she got in whatever predicament she was in by way of the scenario portrayed in that movie. Not exactly one of my fonder recollections of that trip.