“Ankaran?” I asked in surprise.

“Ankaran,” the driver repeated and pointed out the door into the darkness.

Kind of reluctantly but I did get off.

The door closed immediately and the bus left.

I stood there until my eyes got used to the darkness, then I walked over to the other side of the road. Soon I could see better; the night was not really that dark.

I could still hear the engine of the bus and I could see its lights distancing away in a curve. Not much after the curve the bus slowed down and pulled up to a gate with red and green lights at the top. ‘It must be the checkpoint at the border,’ I thought. I did not quite understand why I was so close to it. I estimated the distance less than a quarter of a mile.

It is clear that the bus driver dropped me off where there was no bus stop. I can only speculate why he did not stop for me in Ankaran. Perhaps he simply did not remember that I bought my ticket to Ankaran or he was waiting for me to ask him to stop there. Well, I missed the resort but at least I was not taken all the way to the border.

Some kind of a vehicle was coming out of the curve. I realized I should hide because the vehicle could belong to the border patrol. The beam lights were scanning the trees along the road and just before they hit me I jumped off the pavement and threw myself down into the deep grass.

After the vehicle passed me, I stood up and made a few steps away from the road while keeping an eye on the border crossing. I saw that another vehicle was leaving the checkpoint, coming in my direction, so I had to hide again. This time I stood behind the trunk of a tree and I saw when the beam lights hit the surface of the water in the bay. I could also see that only a couple of feet from where I was standing there was a steep decline down to the edge of the water.

I sat down and waited. No vehicles came from either direction for a few minutes. I carefully approached the edge of the decline and then climbed down to the water. The descent was only a few feet from the level of the road. There were some big rocks near the water. I sat on one of them.

Now I had a good view of the tip of the bay as the lights at the border crossing reflected on the water. The other shore, which I expected to be Italy, was dimly lit. I was glad the Yugoslav side was in darkness so I did not have to worry about being seen. One concern I had was the lights of passing vehicles scanning the surface of the bay that appeared as smooth as a mirror. There was no wind even to ruffle the water. Swimming would surely create waves, I figured, and if vehicles come from the checkpoint before I get far enough from the shore, I could be seen.

I climbed back up to the road. I had to get further away from the checkpoint.

I walked along the right side of the road, hiding whenever I saw vehicles coming from either direction.

After a few minutes of walking, I found a spot where the edge of the road was just a couple feet from the bank and where I could easily climb down to the water. I sat on a large stone and observed the bay for quite some time. Now I felt that I was at a safe distance from the checkpoint, although, the lights of vehicles could still be seen on the water when they came out of the curve. The water to my left got lost in total darkness. It appeared to me that not far from where I was the bay widened out into the open sea.

I estimated that the border crossing to my right was about half a mile away. At about the same distance from the crossing on the Italian side I saw a brightly lit section of the shore. If I attempt to reach Italy at that point, I thought, I would have to swim no more than three quarters of a mile.

It had cooled off from the heat of the day and I began to feel a bit cold sitting there in a light shirt. I stuck my hand into the water to test its temperature and concluded that it was warmer than the air.

I had no reason to wait any longer. I got undressed, leaving only the swimming trunk on, and put my clothes and my shoes into the empty plastic bag. I blew air first into the other bag that already had the rest of what I was going to take with me and forced it down to the bottom of the shopping bag in a way I hoped would seal the opening and keep the air in so the water could not get inside. I also inflated the bag with my clothes in it and put it on top of the other bag. Now the shopping bag was full and it looked like a big balloon. I pulled the rope through the handle of the shopping bag and tied nuts at both ends to create large enough hooks that would be comfortably loose on my shoulders after I put my arms through them.

I was careful stepping into the water because there were all kinds of oddly shaped sharp rocks at the edge. Once I was in waist deep only after a few steps, I lay on top of the water and started swimming in chest strokes. I tried to make my movements as gentle as possible to avoid creating big waves.

I hardly swam more than a minute when headlights from a passing vehicle scanned the surface. When the light hit me, I felt like I was badly exposed and I thought I would immediately hear a loud speaker informing me that I was under arrest.

It was careless on my part not to think of the color of the plastic bag when I was making my plans for the escape. I should have selected a black or at least a very dark color bag. The one I had was shining so strongly in the beam lights that it lit up the water around me. I could almost completely submerge my head in the water but the bag was very visible as it swam on the surface: it was about two feet long and almost a foot high.

As I kept looking back towards the dark shore and saw that the vehicle did not stop, I felt relieved.

I wanted to get out of the zone where the lights hit the surface so I started swimming faster. Unfortunately, making big strokes resulted in the rope getting jerked and the shopping bag - which otherwise followed me at about a foot distance behind my head - moving forward suddenly, hitting my head and pushing my face into the salty water. Soon, my eyes and my nostril began to burn from the salt.

As I distanced away from the shore, the temperature of the water dropped significantly. Perhaps it felt mild when I stepped into it only because the air was cool.

Shortly after another vehicle passed behind me and lit up my bag, which at this time I tried to force below the surface as much as I could, a bright light began flashing at the tip of the bay, almost where the crossing station was. At the same time a not too loud siren went off and I heard a boat engine starting.

‘That’s it,’ I thought, ‘they are coming to get me.’

The boat left the shore, made a fairly large circle in the end of the bay while continuously scanning the water with a powerful beam of light in all directions. The closest the boat got to me was about a quarter of a mile. By hugging the bag, I was able to completely pull it under water for the moment when the light swept over me. As I submerged my head at the same time, I could not possibly be seen.

After the boat returned to the shore, it took me some time to regain my calm.

Finally, I continued my swimming and by the time the next vehicle on the road lit up the surface again, I was out of the spotlight. I returned to my slow, gentle strokes because I wanted to economize my strength.

I did not even make a quarter of the distance yet but I already began to feel signs of exhaustion. Normally, such a distance did not make me tired at that age, so I attributed the exhaustion to the exciting minutes I had just lived through. Indeed, soon I was breathing easier and my muscles felt more relaxed. The only thing that really disturbed me at that point was the water temperature. Of course, when I swam faster, my blood circulation improved and I felt less cold. I changed my tempo often.

The bag hitting my head from behind and pushing my face into the water did not bother me anymore as I was already used to the burning sensation in my eyes and in my nose.

After swimming faster for a few minutes, I stopped, turned over onto my back, and rested while floating myself with only some small movements of my hands. I tried to rest only for short periods in order to avoid my circulation slowing down too much.

Due to the rests I had to take, I was not making progress fast.

By the time I reached the middle of the bay, I was very cold. Still, my eyes on the lights of the Italian shore, I did not think that being cold would cause any problems. True, at one point I looked back at the dark Yugoslav coast because the idea of turning back somehow crept into my mind. I quickly convinced myself that it made no difference anymore; the distance was about the same, so I might as well just keep moving forward.

When a small fish jumped out of the water right in front of my nose, it scared me for a moment. Unfortunately, the fish reminded me of the article I had read in the Hungarian communist daily newspaper just weeks earlier about how badly shark infested the waters of the Adriatic Sea was. At the time I read the article, it actually put my mind at ease because I thought it was nothing more than scare tactics. Besides, usually the opposite of what that paper said was true.

The fish jumped out again and later I felt like it swam into my toes.

What if a shark swims into my toes, I wondered. I quickly concluded that if a shark attacks me, there would be nothing I could do, so I might as well just get the whole thing out of my mind.

As I was getting closer to the Italian shore, I could make out objects under the street lights. The brightly lit area appeared to be a sail boat harbor.

While searching that harbor with my eyes, suddenly something dark floating on the water blocked my view. I stopped swimming. Looking towards the tip of the bay, I saw another one. Looking to my left, out to the open sea, I saw nothing but darkness because there were no lights in the distance.

I moved forward very slowly, expecting to run into a net or something that might be the border. Soon, I was passing the floats. Once behind me, I assumed they were buoys either marking the border, indeed, or just indicating the half way between the two shores.

Hypothermia

It was getting more and more difficult to move my arms. My whole body was getting kind of stiff. Swimming faster did not seem to be any good anymore because recovering from the exhaustion that followed by resting took much longer, and that in turn just got my muscles more frozen.

I managed to struggle on for another while. However, by the time I had about three quarters of the distance behind me, I began to think that I would not be able to make it. My thoughts were getting more and more negative.

When I was about ready to give up and stop moving my arms, an interesting thought formed in my mind. It was about being on a tropical island where I was sunbathing stretched out in the hot sand. I began to see the glowing sun and at the same time I felt the sand burning my skin. As I did not let go of this vision, I kept seeing palm trees and people playing volley ball on a beach.

Was I actually asleep and dreaming? I do not know. The fact is that by the time I was back into reality, I was pretty close to the shore, probably no more than three hundred feet. I clearly saw the individual sailboats under powerful light bulbs. At the same time, close to the harbor on the left, I saw a building surrounded by a stone or brick wall, and on top of that wall, under a light, someone was standing there looking in my direction, probably through binoculars.

I was so numb in my whole body that I did not even feel the cold anymore. Fortunately, I could still move my arms.

I figured the man watching me could be of the coast guard so I changed direction and swam straight towards him. I did not want him to shoot at me in case he thought I was a smuggler who wanted to avoid him.

When I finally reached the edge of the water, I bumped into a stone wall. The top of the wall, the street level, was about three feet from the surface of the water. I tried to reach up but I did not have that kind of strength left in my arms. At the same time my toes could not find bottom which made me panic briefly. ‘How am I going to get out of the water?’ I wondered. ‘Am I going to drown just when I made it?’

Fortunately, after I swam about ten feet to the right, I found an opening in the wall, steps where I could crawl out of the water. First, I was not able to stand on my feet because my whole body started shaking. My teeth chattered so violently, I almost bit my tongue. Finally, I straightened up and looked at the man above me on the wall. As he was standing directly under the light, I saw that he wore some kind of uniform. He seemed to be curiously looking at me.

Using whatever Italian I had learned, I asked him if I was in Italy.

“Naturally,” he answered casually also in Italian.

“I am so glad,” I sighed.

Keeping an eye on the man, I pulled out the top plastic bag. I immediately saw that water had entered that bag and my clothes got soaked. The bag on the bottom was still fully inflated, and later I was glad to see that not a drop of water had damaged my documents.

When I started putting on my wet slacks and my wet shirt, the Italian on top of the wall began laughing. I liked that friendly sound and concluded that I can attempt walking out of his sight without any further communication. For a moment I thought I could just surrender to him and ask for political asylum but then I changed my mind. ‘Being so close to the border crossing, he might just hand me over to the Yugoslavs, especially, if I could not make myself clear due to the language barrier. Better get away from the border area and reach the city of Trieste as soon as possible.’

By the time I was dressed the Italian stopped laughing and walked away on top of the wall.

Still shivering, I looked around. The road was only a few feet from the water. I quickly stepped over some chain that hung on the side of the road and began walking, of course, not towards the border crossing but in the opposite direction.

After I passed the building the man was guarding, I saw houses on the right side of the road. When I saw cars parked in front of the houses, I checked their license plates under the streetlight. They all were Italian plates.

‘Wow!’ I sighed again. ‘I really made it.’

The left side of the road ran along the shoreline. After a couple of minutes of brisk walking warmed me up, I stepped off the road, leaned against a rail and looked back to the Yugoslav side which was in almost total darkness with only a few spots of faint lights here and there.

“I am free!” I yelled out. “I am free!”

At that moment I felt like no other times ever in my life. It was a highly exhilarating feeling of happiness and of relief.

As I continued walking, I arrived at the tip of the small peninsula that separated the bay I swam and the much larger Bay of Trieste. When I saw that huge bay with the myriads of lights reflecting on its calm surface, the sight almost took my breath away. The shoreline ran around in a gigantic semi-circle, the lights at the furthest distance so faint they were hardly visible. Trieste, the city of my dreams for so long, built up on the sides of mountains looked magnificent in the middle of the night.

I stopped under a street light to pull out the unopened plastic bag to find my watch in it. I had already thrown the wet bag away. My pants and my shirt were still wet but I was not a bit cold anymore.

It was almost half past midnight. Estimating the distance, I figured I could be in Trieste by four or five in the morning.

As soon as I started walking again, a car came out of the curve behind, pulled into the wrong lane and stopped right beside me. It was some kind of a sport car with its top open, a young guy driving it.

“Trieste?” he asked me.

He surprised me and I had no idea of what he wanted. First, I thought he was asking for direction, so I said:

“Si (meaning ‘yes’ in Italian),” and I waved my hand in the direction of the city, showing him just to continue on.

He opened the door on the passenger side and invited me to get in.

I had done a lot of hitch hiking when I was a teenager, so I jumped right in without having any kind of suspicious thoughts.

After hardly more than a minute of driving, the guy started laughing. At the same time, he stepped on the brake and activated his right turn signal while pointing at the traffic sign that read ‘Lazaret Blok 2 km’.

“No! No!” I shouted at him but by then he deactivated the turn signal, stepped on the gas and continued straight on.

He said something I did not understand and then he laughed again. I thought he was drunk and regretted accepting his offer. Fortunately, he lived not far from there. He stopped before turning into a side street, said ‘arrivederci’ and let me out.

I went back to the left side of the road and promised myself I would not get into any kind of a vehicle again until I reached the center of Trieste.

I left the small village behind and walked for a long time before I saw another vehicle. It was a big ‘camion’ - as big rigs are called in most of Europe - coming from the direction of the city. I got off the road until the truck passed me.

I just kept walking. The cool air of the night kept me alert.

I was already getting close to the outskirts of the city when a dog appeared from somewhere. It was a big but friendly looking animal. It joined me and escorted me for quite a while until suddenly it started barking and ran off into the night.

The first thing that amazed me when I reached the city was the huge number of automobiles parked everywhere in the streets. The names of streets and squares were equally fascinating. When I arrived at the ‘Piazza Garibaldi’, a well lit nice little square, I stopped in front of the statue there and marveled at it for minutes.

‘Via Carducci’, I read the street sign as I walked on.

The shop-windows just stunned me with all the goods behind the glasses, goods we had only dreamed about in Hungary.

I was walking in a major street when I saw a uniformed man coming from the opposite direction. I quickly glanced at myself and concluded that the huge spots of salt on my already dry slacks definitely made me suspicious looking. ‘Oh, well,’ I thought, ‘it is time to be arrested anyway so that I can get registered with the Italian authorities for the asylum.’

He was a policeman.

When he was only a few steps from me, he grabbed his helmet-looking white hat and lifted it briefly while saying ‘good night’ to me in Italian. He just walked by me. I could not believe it. In a similar situation in Hungary, the policeman would have surely wanted me to identify myself and then answer a lot of questions.

After having this other taste of freedom, I walked on. Soon I found myself in a fancy street with restaurants, pizzerias and sidewalk cafes. The chairs on the sidewalk either piled up or covered by the huge table umbrellas.

Nothing was moving. The city was fully asleep.

I still had plenty of time until sunrise. Since I was getting very tired and sleepy, I opened a folding chair in front of a café and sat down. I fell asleep in no time. I could not sleep too long, the cold woke me up. I was shivering once again. On and off, I slept a little more. I tried to warm up a bit by walking around, and then I sat down again and tried to sleep.

Finally, morning arrived and the city started to come alive.

I walked into another street from where I caught a glance of the sea. I hurried down towards the water. In a few minutes, I arrived in the harbor. I saw a huge ocean liner anchored there, with its name in large letters: CRISTOFORO COLOMBO

The sun was coming up and there were more and more people around.

I was wondering what I should do next when at a corner I bumped into a man.

“Sorry, sorry,” I rushed to say in Italian and moved out of the way.

The man smiled and made a friendly gesture with his hand.

“Nothing,” he replied also in Italian.

He moved on but turned around after a couple steps and came back to me.

“Refugee?” he asked looking at my slacks.

The man was about thirty years old. He was well dressed and had a small luggage in his hand.

My learning the Russian language in the schools for eight years turned out to be very useful. The man was a Serb from a small town in Yugoslavia and he was fluent in Russian.

“First of all,” he said, “you must be very hungry.”

He invited me to have breakfast on him at a coffee shop that was just around the corner. During our conversation, I learned that he worked in Italy as a guest worker and he was on his way home for a vacation.

After I answered all his questions about where I came from and how I managed to reach Italy, he asked me what my plans were.

“I heard there was a refugee camp in Trieste,” I answered.

“That’s right, I also heard about that.” He paid the waitress and then he said: “Let’s go! Let’s find out more about that camp!”

He asked a taxi driver.

“I have your camp,” he said when he turned back to me. “It’s up in the mountains about a twenty-minute drive from here. Get in!”

He opened the back door for me.

“I don’t have enough money for taxi,” I said but he quickly waved me down.

“Just get in!” he said with a big smile.

He sat next to the driver up front and the two of them had a good conversation during the trip.

After leaving the city, the road was curvy and often steep as we climbed higher and higher. Looking out the window, I could see the harbor deep down in the distance. When we passed intersections with traffic signs showing that the Yugoslav border was only one kilometer away, I was a bit nervous.

Finally, the Good Samaritan turned to me, pointing at a traffic sign.

“Look! Padriciano,” he said. “This is where the camp is.”

The driver made a left turn onto a narrow road and soon we arrived at a fenced around fairly large building complex. We stopped right in front of the gate where I saw uniformed people inside a smaller building.

The Serb got out, went inside and I saw him talking with one of the guards for about a minute. When he came out, he sat back inside the cab.

“You are here,” he told me. “You can go now. The guards will take care of you… Wait!” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a fifty-thousand Italian Lira bill and put it into my shirt pocket. “Now, go!”

I could not just go. I was overcome by emotions.

“Can you give me your name and your address?” I said. “I am going to America. When I work and earn money, I would like to send this money back to you, and also the cost of the taxi.”

The man was shaking his head.

“Don’t worry about the money!” he said. “Just go my friend… and have a happy life.”

As soon as I was out of the taxi, the driver sped away.

In the camp

One of the guards opened the gate and waved me to get inside.

After some formalities, I was sent to an office where a Hungarian interpreter gave me all the instructions I needed. I was assigned to a room and then sent to a warehouse to pick up sheets, towels, toothbrush, soap, a blanket and all other basic essentials.

The room had five double-decker iron beds with military mattresses. Six of the beds were already taken. The metal locker had plenty of room for what little belongings I had.

All six roommates happened to be in the room when I arrived. They were all Hungarians, ranging in age from fourteen to fifty-five. Of course, they all spoke Hungarian. Nevertheless, communicating with two them turned out to be quite a challenge. Fortunately, it was a challenge not only for me. The two youngsters, about twenty years old, came from the easternmost part of Hungary where a lot of the people dropped out of school after four years of elementary and wanted nothing more than to work the land.

As I soon learned, I was not the only one who reached Italy by swimming. Most of the others either escaped over dry land or had visas to Italy and decided not to return to Hungary.

It did not take another hour before four more escapees arrived, one after another, and our room was full.

The youngest, the fourteen-year old happened to simply walk across from one side of the train station to the other side in Gorizia, a town split by the border, and he was in Italy. He said no one paid attention to him because of his age but adults who attempted to do the same were apprehended by border police. He was crying while telling the story of his escape because the interpreter had already informed him that due to his age he would be returned to his parents in Budapest.

The oldest, the fifty-five year old man was quite a character. He was short and fat with just a little hair behind his ears. He kept repeating how happy he was being free after so much humiliation and mistreatment by Hungarian authorities. His main complaint was that he could not get his poems published.

“They (the authorities) oppressed me,” he told everyone in the room over and over again. “My poems are good. Of course, the communists could not appreciate them because they have no taste for literature. Just listen to this one!”

Most of us in the room did not mind hearing his writings. They were not the greatest of literary value but some of them were very funny and we enjoyed laughing. We laughed at anything that was just a bit funny anyway because of our state of mind. Being free was a big deal for all of us.

Later, I had to go back to the offices. The interpreter first took me to the representative of Caritas, the relief organization that would help us find our way out of the camp and arrive in the country we chose to immigrate to. I had to register with the Caritas because I was born into a Catholic family.

I was asked what country I desired to go to. I named the USA. When asked if I had any relatives there I said:

“I know someone who might be willing to help.”

I thought of the young American tourist I met in the spring at the Citadel Tourist Hotel in Budapest.

I was told to write him a letter and explain my situation.

After the Caritas, I went through some kind of interrogation for quite some time. I still don’t know, but all of us in the camp speculated that that office was of the Interpol.

I heard from others that the camp used to be a US military base during WW2, and it was converted into a United Nations facility after the war ended and refugees started arriving there from communist countries.

There were people in the camp from just about every Soviet-bloc nation, some even from Albania, the tiny country that in those years allied itself with Mao’s China.

All in all, being in the camp was a lot of fun.

We received some pocket money every month. We were given clothing as well. Breakfast, lunch and dinner was served in the cafeteria, we just had to line up at the right time. The food was not bad at all, and if we needed a double portion, we got that, too, whenever there was enough food left over.

After a few days I received an ID card that would enable me to leave the camp through the gates at any time. Not far from the camp, there was a bus stop for the Padriciano-Trieste line. The bus ran every hour and the fare was very affordable, especially after we learned that buying tickets only to the neighboring village and then riding the bus all the way to Trieste was not impossible. Some drivers made us buy the full ticket though.

There were quite a few females in the camp, too.

One of my roommates and I became good friends. Together we befriended two girls and the four of us often took the bus to the city where we spent afternoons on the beautiful beaches.

One evening, on our way back from the beach, since we already missed dinner in the camp, we stopped in a small Pizzeria in Padriciano. We added the money together and bought a large pizza and a bottle of Chianti, an excellent Italian wine.

After dinner, we decided to take the shortest way to the camp which meant crossing a field full of bushes. The night was pleasantly mild, so we did not really feel like going back to the camp yet. We sat down in the grass and watched the stars in the moonless sky. Later, my friend and his girlfriend decided to have more privacy so they moved further away. I also had a good time with my partner.

It was very late when we finally headed back to the camp.

Next day, the two girls disappeared. My friend and I received a postcard about ten days later. The girls were in Nice, France.

“Sorry, we could not tell you guys that we were planning to take off. We just could not take that camp anymore. We did not leave Hungary to be fenced in again and wait for who knows how long. We hitchhiked down to the Riviera. We crossed the French border without any problem. We don’t know yet where we go from here. Good luck to you.”

We never heard from the girls again.

About three weeks after I wrote to my friend in the USA, I received a very official looking letter from his father. When I opened the envelope, first a twenty-dollar bill fell out. This money was about as much at that time as the fifty-thousand Liras the Good Samaritan gave me. For us refugees, it was a lot of money. What I pulled out of the envelope turned out to be a notarized sponsorship affidavit, and finally, the letter itself.

My friend’s father - I will just call him my Sponsor from here on - wrote a very interesting letter. He informed me that his son forwarded my letter to him, and he, together with his wife, decided to help me get settled in the USA.

“This is still a good place to come to,” he wrote, “but don’t expect miracles. One must work very hard here to get ahead. The opportunities exist; it will be up to you to use them. This is still a very free country. You will feel neither the pressure nor the support of the government. As long as you abide by the laws, you can decide your own fate. We will assist you in the beginning. You can live with us. We’ll have a room for you…”

I took the affidavit to the office of the Caritas.

“This looks great,” I was told. “It should not take longer than six to eight months before you receive your US immigrant visa. Just be patient, wait for the process to run its course. Don’t be stupid like many others, leaving the camp for a long time and then coming back begging for a new start here.”

I had no desire to leave the camp anyway as I needed the security I felt there. 

... 

Click PART 7