One man's answer to Balkan crimewave

Frontline: Belgrade

You meet the strangest people on night trains in the Balkans. On the long, slow journey from the Macedonian capital, Skopje, to Belgrade, I ran into a man from Oklahoma who had stepped right out of the old American Wild West.

As the train rumbled on, John told how crime in Serbia had become so rife he'd resorted to defending his property with a gun at his side.

These decrepit night trains are the remains of the old Yugoslav train network. At times, it's hard to believe you're in Europe, or in this century. If you're lucky, you might get a first-class sleeper compart- ment that reeks of blocked lavatories. If you're unlucky, you could find yourself sitting up all night in a train compartment full of chain-smoking, drunk Serbs who have no intention of sleeping.

There's plenty of time to talk. The journey from Skopje to Belgrade takes eight hours; you could drive it in four.

"The other day, I woke up in the middle of the night when I heard a noise coming from outside my apartment," said John – not his real name – who has lived in Belgrade for several years. "I looked out, and saw someone trying to break into my BMW."

Vehicle crime is rampant in the Balkans. Most European rental companies won't let you so much as take their cars over the border.

You see even the most battered old Yugo, the chunky family hatchback produced in communist-era Yugoslavia, secured with a steering-wheel lock – though that doesn't stop people regularly peeling off the windscreen wipers and wing mirrors as accessories for their own cars.

Most people just grin and bear it, but not John from Oklahoma. "When I saw what he was doing to my car, I went and got my gun," he said.

Everybody has a gun in Serbia. "I switched the laser sight on and put the red spot on his body, to let him see I was training it on him, and he ran away. But I stayed on the balcony waiting for him. About 10 minutes later, he was back, trying to get into the car again. So I fired in the air over his head. Nobody's tried to break into my car since."

Serbia's economy was devastated by years of Western sanctions and misrule under Slobodan Milosevic, whose cronies lined their pockets at the expense of state companies. On top of this came the damage from the 1999 Nato air campaign. Now the country is wretchedly poor, and the crime wave is out of control.

Not only cars fall prey to itchy fingers. I lost my mobile phone at a restaurant in the nearest Belgrade has to a tourist area. I made the mistake of momentarily putting the phone on the table. Instantly, at amazing speed, what looked like a waiter stepped up as if to remove a plate, snatched the phone and ran off. The other waiters said they'd never seen the man before.

In Belgrade's markets, you can find almost brand-new mobile phones selling for a tenth of what they cost in Western Europe, and all of them have been stolen.

A Serbian colleague tells how he parked his car outside his block of flats overnight with a brand new tool-kit locked out of sight in the boot.

The next morning, he found the boot had been broken open and the tools were gone. He bought a replacement set, had the car repaired and locked them up overnight. The same thing happened again.

The third time, he took the tool-kit inside the flat with him and left the car boot empty.

The next morning, he found the boot broken open. Inside, a note from the thief said: "Hey, this isn't funny."