It’s the middle of the night and I’m standing on the terrace of a newly renovated villa, a good half hour from Hamburg Central Station. I’ve been sipping my Ballantines Cola for a while now, talking to a guy in a white windbreaker. He’s trying to make me understand what exactly it feels like to have found a listening device placed in your car by “the narcs”.

“I was in the car with my driver, looking for a good hiding place for my cell phone,” he was saying. “The battery and sim card were out, but I wanted to make sure that thing wasn’t recording any of my conversations. So I put my hand behind the panel at the foot space and end up with all all these cables in my grasp. I immediately panicked and cursed. My driver said, ‘That’s not a part of the car. Because this is Sony’, pointing to the recorder in my hand ‘and this is Volvo.’ Normally he’s not good with technology, but this time he was right.”

In the end, the drug enforcement agency was able to link him to a 70 kg load of cocaine, which had just been intercepted on the high seas, thanks to recordings made on that device. Now he’s sitting on the four years he got for it but today he’s enjoying a furlough. And I wonder how many years of jail time come together at this party as a whole.

You see, I’m at the birthday party of Germany’s “Snow King” (also known as Ronald “Blacky” Miehling) who has done almost 28 years already, – with short breaks, of course. Miehling is a legend of the Hamburg underworld – one of the few Germans who have worked directly with Colombian wholesale dealers. For years, it went well but eventually he was caught. Since then, he has written a book about his experiences, and now awaits his impending release. As an appetiser, he was allowed to celebrate his last birthday in freedom.

I met Blacky and his boys last year by chance and by sheer luck, I was able interview him. We kept in touch after that but I was still quite surprised when one of his middlemen called me a few weeks ago, to tell me that Blacky had been given permission to spend the night of his 64th birthday in freedom and was therefore planning a small party at the Villa Harburg. Would I like to come by with a photographer? Well, I thought, did Charlie want to go to the Chocolate Factory?

As our car rolled up to the large parking lot a few days later, the Villa Harburg stood in front of us illuminated by lights in the colours of the rainbow. It was a beautiful sight and a nice gesture by his friends, probably in an attempt to remind Blacky of the old times and help him briefly forget the years in jail.

At the entrance, which was on the side of the building, a cute Eastern European woman smiled at me and pushed a shot glass filled with something red in my hands.

We walked through a stuccoed room to the “main floor”, in the middle of which stood a table draped with Blacky’s gangster merch: mostly T-shirts with slogans like “Mama Coca” or “The Snow King”. I looked around and I noticed that most of those present were wearing the T-shirts already.

And then I saw Blacky – or rather his back, which sported a golden crown and the “Snow King” lettering underneath. He turned around and welcomed me to his party. “I’m so glad you are here!” he shouted, with his rough voice. His handshake was somehow even stronger than at our last meeting. I think it was because he had really been looking forward to the night. “I’m very excited to be at your party,” I retorted.

Blacky laughed: “Yes, I have to be back at 5PM. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the narcs invited themselves tonight to keep an eye on me.” That was probably the reason why I had yet to see any trays being passed around.

I tried to toast to his birthday and he politely declined, saying that one of the restrictions of his furlough was that he wasn’t allowed to have any alcohol. He did give me a bracelet for the open bas his friends had been allowed to run, though. And at the bar there they were at last: a bunch of little baggies filled with white powder.

After uncertainly oggling it for a while, one of the other guests dared to go for it. He poured a bit into the hollow part between his thumb and forefinger, and snorted. “So?” I asked him. He shook his head in disappointment and threw the bag back on the counter. Blacky had allowed himself a small joke – it was caffeine powder.

I had spent good time wondering what kind of guys would show up to this birthday before getting here, so I looked around. Each of the faces I saw, seemed to have been marked by life, their possible stories springing to mind. I chatted with one or the other, to find out from how they knew Blacky. As Blacky had basically spent his adult life in two rather similar environments – Germany’s criminal underworld and in jail – it was hardly surprising that his guests came from this same orbit: lawyers, former business partners and jailbirds.

One of them was the guy I found myself chatting to on the terrace. “I read Blacky’s book my first time in jail, and I didn’t meet him in person until much later in life. He’s a fine guy,” he said with a slight Northern German accent.

Another, relatively young man sat in a silver leather chair, told me that he had only just met Blacky. So far he had only heard stories but wanted to hear everything from him – he wanted to know how he had made ​​it to the top back in the day.

Blacky sat down on a chair in the middle of the main floor, in front of a huge portrait of himself. On closer inspection, you realised the picture was made of plastic prison cutlery glued together, as the artist Hajo Latzel informed me. Why is it painted in black, red and gold? “Because Blacky is Germany’s biggest cocaine dealer”.

It was time for Blacky to give a speech. Still sat on the chair, he first thanked all those who had come to his birthday and then read a couple of chapters from his unpublished book. The chapters were about his life after his time as a drug dealer. He spoke about life in jail, loneliness, oppression as well as alcohol smuggling in German prisons. The guests listened to him, laughed and now and then clapped – mostly when they heard of situations that reminded them of their own lives.

At some point Blacky read a passage in which he describes leaving Glasmoor prison the first time:

“A week had passed since I had my first furlough. I stood with my first furlough papers in front of the building. It somehow didn’t seem real to me. After all those years in prison, I was “free” for ten hours. My buddies were waiting in a car outside the main gate. I must have looked excited while riding into “freedom”. Nothing had changed, except time was gone. It had just passed. Was it lost? I could painfully see this in the car mirror. I could see the many years that had passed on my face, the traces of those years had been burned into my face. “

Everyone applauded. But before the party got too melancholy, a DJ put on a couple of instrumentals and the Hamburger rapper Bolzte got to spitting his rhymes into a microphone.

Smaller groups started forming, away from the dance floor. And even though this is something you come across in clubs and bars all the time, I had this constant feeling that they were discussing “business” – but then again it was just cars and women.

People weren’t shy of the open bar, so slowly everyone was drunk and boisterous. I kept up and before long I realised that I was one of the few remaining guests, while Blacky and his boys sat in a private room behind the bar exchanging stories for a while.

It was time for to go. After a warm farewell, I stumbled into a taxi heading for the St. Pauli neighbourhood, where my friend and I drifted into a dark corner bar.

Two days later, the snapshot below appeared on Blacky’s Facebook page with the caption: “Post from Colombia?”

The JVA Glasmoor responded promptly with a urine test. Blacky’s statement, “How stupid do you think I am, and when were any of the piss tests in my almost 28 years in jail positive?!”
 
Hold on to your sense of humour, Blacky, I hope that you can celebrate your next birthday in “real freedom”.

More (ex) drug dealers:

Simon Mason Was the Britpop Aristocracy’s Drug Dealer

The (ex) Biggest Heroin Dealer in the Whole Wide World

My Top Secret Meeting With One of the Silk Road’s Biggest Drug Lords