The Six Escapes - Finding Lost Civilizations

we must be in Austria by that point. Well,we were now somewhat relieved andbegan walking more casually. After an hourwe walked to the top of the hill, where tomy surprise, looking down below was a bigriver. I assumed it to be the Mura; therewas also a village nearby. Now we weren'tsure at all whether we were still inYugoslavia or in Austria. In just fewminutes our answer came — in a bigdisappointing predicament. We heard loudnoises coming from our left, and lookingdown we saw was a large building with aYugoslav flag on it. There were armyguards lined up and receiving instructionfrom an officer. After a few minutes, theyrapidly — with their riffles — began scalingthe hill toward us. We took off with lightningspeed to circumvent them and the armyguards’ outpost building. As we wererunning they shouted, "Stop or we shoot!"We kept running into a thick forest on veryrocky terrain. A few shots were fired; Icould hear the bullets whistle by. After halfhour of running, we came to the river, dovein, and swam across. Now I was sure wewere in Austria. Looking back we saw theguards coming to the river, so wecontinued running but they didn’t follow us.We sat down and joyfully laughed, wet andexhausted, with sore and blistered feet.We proceeded across the fields until wecame to a stream. We sat down, washedour muddy clothing and shoes, rested foran hour and happily walked barefootacross farm fields and forests, avoiding thepeople. Late in the afternoon we had nochoice but to walk into the village to get