The Day of Atonement

Its Yom Kippur and I'm pretty hungry. But to talk about that would only make it worse, so I'll share a story of the black market. I've been reading Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser, who you may remember from Fast Food Nation. Both of which I highly recommend if you have any interest in the true workings of some of America's largest industries. In Reefer Madness, Schlosser deals with American marijuana policy, migrant farmers, and the black market both at home and abroad. I mention this because this is a story in which one topic seems to crop up in multiple unrelated places. This is the first, my personal reading.
The second is in class. My course on Law and Human Rights featured a reading about the Central European black market that flourished under communism and persists as governments try to shift to free market capitalist systems. Three days ago I was talking to an American student I met at Charles University who started telling me about his thesis on, you guessed it, the black market.

On Thursday I had decided to exchange my remaining American currency for Czech crowns. As I walk up to the exchange booth (I asked around and this one had the best rates) I am stopped by a man who asks me which country I'm from. I told him and he then offers to exchange my currency at a better rate and he tells me he is part of the black market. Not wanting to get involved with him I tell him I have Travelers' Cheques so it will be of no use to him. I begin to exchange my money, and lo and behold, he has followed me inside. He then starts yelling at me, calling me a liar and acting ashamed, as if I am the one in the wrong. I told him, I'm not the one doing the wrong thing, you're the one in the black market. He walked away, but as I'm leaving he again tries to offer me some deal, this time showing me his money, which didn't even look like actual Czech currency. As I walk away, he spits at me.
So that's my first encounter with crime here in Prague, if that's all they got no one need worry.