The Six Escapes - Finding Lost Civilizations

order immediately, despite the fact that itwas now only about midnight.We discreetly sneaked through thekitchen but once outside, four soldierguards surrounded us. One shouted, “Stop!And hands up." They were pointingmachine guns at us. One of them said, "Weknow you're trying to escape to Austria!" Isaid, "No, we're just on the way homenow." We were frisked now from head totoes, our ID's and documents taken, butfortunately they didn't find my hiddenAustrian money, which was sewn into mypants under my belt. Had they found that,we not only would be guilty, but they wouldconfiscate the money. Nonetheless, theyinterrogated us for an hour, threatening totake us to jail. Then finally they took usback into the restaurant and two guards satdown with us at a table.By sunrise, most of the guests haddisappeared and so had the musicians.Our conversation and/or interrogation wasdone in Serb-Croatian, since the borderarmy guards were all from other provinces.In turn the Slovenian soldiers were sent toserve the army to their provinces. InSlovenia, we learned Serb-Croatian,including the Cyrillic writing. The thirdYugoslav language, the Macedonian, wasan option at schools.Sometime later a new army guard, withsome rank came to our table, took ourdocuments from the two guards, anddismissed them. Once again we wereinterrogated at length with questions suchas "Who do you know in Austria and other