After sneaking into Greece without a passport stamp earns her deportation, a young backpacker’s desperate drive across the Balkans leads to a broken-down car and a terrifying ordeal, where she discovers how strangers are both monsters and heroes. This story was selected as a finalist in our “When Things Fall Apart” travel writing competition.
We thought it was a brilliant plan: to save $20, I would hide under a down duvet in the back seat of our little blue Fiat during the ferry crossing from Bari to Patras. My friend Mary would drive onto the ship and pay $20 each for herself and the car. Italy to Greece, with money left over.
It was 1971, we were both 19, and the budget for our nine months in Europe was $5 a day between us.
We drove off the boat into Athens sunshine, blissfully ignorant of the problems I would face without a Greek stamp on my passport. A month later, during an idyllic month on Crete, I proudly described my stowaway adventure to a new friend. She was horrified. “There’s a dictatorship!” she almost shouted at me. “People get thrown in jail for having long hair.”
The fourth anniversary of Greece’s 1967 coup was approaching. I was anxious, knowing I needed to resolve the problem of my missing passport stamp in order to leave Greece and keep traveling in Europe. I concocted a story that I had come on a fishing boat from Brindisi with a family. I knew it was weak, but I had no alternative.
Back in Athens, we found the main police station. I rehearsed my speech. Mary couldn’t come with me, because her presence would only raise questions about my already implausible story. I had to do this alone.
At the station, I asked for help in English. I said I had a passport problem. After waiting an hour, I was ushered into an office facing a gruff, bearded man with medals on his uniform. I tried to be calm as I related my made-up story about the boat.
“But where is this family!” he yelled. “Why would they take a stranger with them? How did you find them? I don’t believe you!” He accused me of smuggling drugs or weapons into Greece. He was on his feet, shouting over his large desk. Several police officers joined us in the room. They took my passport. This was not going well.
After more accusations, the gruff man sent me to the waiting room. Two hours later, my nails chewed to the quick, he called me back in, holding my precious passport.
“You have one week to leave Greece,” he said. “You are deported. You can never enter Greece again. We will put a stamp on your passport to prevent it.” He slammed the passport down on his desk for emphasis. He must have seen the relief on my face as I envisioned hopping back on a ferry to Italy, this time as a paying guest.
He waved his hand in my face. “You cannot! Leave Greece the way you came in,” he said curtly. “No boats.” Then he put a large black stamp in my passport. I had one week to leave by land.
We would have to drive north through two communist countries in a car that was starting to fail. Our auto insurance was about to expire, and we had no money for new insurance. Without it, we couldn’t cross any borders.
We drove north to Thessaloniki, where my mother had promised to send emergency funds from my savings to buy car insurance and pad our budget for a few weeks.
My deportation date was looming, but no money had arrived at American Express. Finally, late on Friday, the day I was supposed to leave, the funds came. It was too late to buy insurance. We would have to wait until Monday. I debated going to the police to explain, but decided not to test fate. We would have to hope for the best.
On Monday, we bought insurance and celebrated with a glass of raki brandy. I began driving us out of the country because Mary felt weak and was coughing. I was nervous as we arrived at the Greek border. The man in the booth didn’t even look up as he stamped my passport.
Past the Yugoslavian town of Gevgelija, we drove late into the night, sleeping near the road on the outskirts of a grubby village. Yugoslavia seemed ominous, with square buildings and unfriendly faces. We passed farms with women in the fields, wooden carts pulled by donkeys on dirt roads, and people in unfamiliar peasant clothing.
On our second day, I discovered that our map, which showed many roads but made no distinction between their sizes, was no help. Before long, I was off the map and deeply lost. I drove all day, ending up on rutted, narrow, and dusty unmarked dirt roads.
I worried that Mary’s cold was turning into pneumonia. There were no towns in sight, only small disheveled farms and animals along the road. Near dusk, I put the car into low gear to climb a steep hill towards a rose-orange sunset, and the car choked, gasped, and died. “Well, that’s happened before, and we always got it started again,” I told myself. Mary barely lifted her head from her pillow in the back seat. We settled in for the night in the isolated spot. We couldn’t see light anywhere.
The next morning, the car was still dead. Wrapped in her duvet, Mary got out to take a look. She had managed to restart it many times, but not this time. We had seen no other vehicle in two days. We were clearly not on any main road. Maybe we were even in Albania.
By afternoon, I was desperate. I began walking along the road to see where it went. About a mile away, the road dropped down into a valley, and in the distance, I could see what looked like a hut, with cows and piles of hay. Excited, I ran back to tell Mary. She groaned, but agreed to walk.
When we approached the little farm, an old woman in a long skirt and shawl sat cradling a bottle of Jim Beam whiskey. She smiled at us without teeth and murmured something Slavic. Goats bleated, and a pig wallowed nearby. A middle-aged man appeared from the side of the house, looked us over, and spit. We had no way to explain ourselves. The four of us sized each other up.
It was clear Mary was ill, and the old woman held out her bottle. Mary took a sip. That broke the ice. We pantomimed driving and tried our best to get across the idea of our dead car. We pointed in the direction we’d come. The man trotted off back up the road, motioning for us to stay. An hour later, he reappeared, carrying our bedding and suitcases. He and the old lady were all smiles now, friendly and welcoming. They fed us strange food on tin plates and showed us an empty room. We lay down on our duvets and tried to sleep, a donkey braying and a chill wind blowing.
The next morning, the man had summoned several others, and they headed back towards our car. Several hours later, our Fiat came barreling down the steep road, pushed by three men with another at the wheel. They managed to steer it into the yard. Now what?
Mary needed a doctor. I tried to think where to go. “Dubrovnik?” I asked the old woman. She motioned outwards with her arm, as if to say, “far away.” “Zagreb?” She laughed and dusted her hands together to show that it was also impossible. Then her eyes lit up. “Peshkopi!” she said. She called to the farmer, who nodded vigorously and set off once again. Hours later, after dark, we heard a truck rumbling near. “Peshkopi,” the woman said, patting my hand.
A beat-up panel truck rolled to a stop at the farm gate. The farmer jumped out of the passenger seat. “Peshkopi,” he said, gesturing towards the truck. We understood. When the driver opened the truck, it was clear we would not be alone. There were two men in the back already. I was taken aback. But clearly, this was our ride out of there, and I had no better ideas. The farmer and his mother smiled, repeated words in Slavic, and waved.
We had no idea if we would ever see our car again.
The driver closed us into the back of the truck with our belongings and the two men. Mary buried herself in her duvet on the hard bed of the truck. I feigned sleep, bouncing over rough roads. Before long, the man next to me began to feel under my duvet, reaching for my legs, my breasts, trying to fondle me. I slapped his arm, and he retreated.
But then he pulled the duvet off, leaped on top of me, and pinned me down. He started trying to lift my shirt. I bit his arm, and he became enraged, a face of powerful dark fury. I could smell alcohol heavy on his breath. He began groping me madly, trying to unzip my jeans. I screamed. The second man reached over to hold my arms down. Mary suddenly jumped up and began pounding on the window of the cab in the front. “Stop the truck!” she shouted. “Stop, stop!” She summoned what little strength and breath she had and kept pounding.
We were both shaken and terrified. We were in the middle of nowhere in the back of a truck with two large, drunk men who could easily overpower us. We didn’t even really know where we were.
I spotted a board along the wall of the truck, grabbed it, and started swinging. I banged the board towards the two men like a machete and hit the cab.
The truck lurched to a stop. The two men sat back on their haunches. The back door opened, and the driver peered inside. I screamed in English: “Let us out, they’re attacking us!” I was still carrying my board as a weapon. The driver grasped the situation immediately and glared at the two men. Mary jumped out, and I followed. We began throwing our suitcases onto the road.
The driver shouted angrily at the two men and slapped the one closest to me, as if knowing he was the main culprit. The two men looked sheepish. The driver made hand movements to urge us back into the truck. He ordered the two men from the back into the cab, which already had one passenger. It was clear he was going to force them all to ride together, one on top of another’s lap.
He seemed genuinely upset. For 15 minutes, we stood in the chilly late-April night, trying to decide what to do. It was not much of a choice. There might not be another vehicle coming past for days. With the two men stumbling out, we decided it was worth getting back inside. The driver loaded our suitcases, and warily, we climbed into the back of the truck. The driver closed the door. We were alone.
I was too anxious for sleep. Hours later, the rumbling of rutted dirt roads changed to asphalt, and the smoothness woke me from what I realized had been a deep sleep. We pulled to a stop, and the back of the truck opened.
We were on a street in a town, with lights and buildings all around us. Stray dogs yipped at our heels. The driver pointed to a neon sign: it said simply “Hotel” in blinking red. Inside, it looked welcoming, with warm lights, patterned carpets, upholstered chairs, and a friendly man at a desk. The truck driver spoke to him for a long time. Soon, the clerk was dragging our suitcases up a staircase. We shook hands with the driver, who looked remorseful, putting both hands over his heart. He handed a piece of paper to the clerk and said something we couldn’t understand, but we understood: he was terribly sorry.
Upstairs, the room we were given had twin beds with blankets, a lamp, and a chair. There was a bathroom down the hall. It looked like heaven to us. If money changed hands, it wasn’t ours.
A doctor arrived at the hotel the next day and gave Mary a shot. By evening, she seemed better. We were treated to an elegant meal, including meat of some kind and puffy dinner rolls. “Don’t worry, “ the desk clerk said as he came to say good night at our table, putting his hands together.
The next afternoon, the clerk came to our room and motioned for us to follow, leading us to a building in a run-down street a few blocks away. There, we could see a giant opening with dismantled trucks and tools inside. It was a school for mechanics. A gang of students gathered around us, jostling to get close, peering into our faces, trying out a few words of English, laughing and joking.
Mary was able to pantomime the car coming to a dead halt, which brought a huge laugh. We held out the paper from the truck driver, which had a crude map drawn on it of the farm where he’d picked us up. The school’s teacher nodded. The clerk beamed at us, “Goot Bai!” the students shouted.
Two days later, the helpful clerk bounded up the stairs in the morning with breakfast and news. “Your car, it is coming!” he said, beside himself with joy. We didn’t know what he meant, but we were hopeful.
Late that afternoon, the clerk led us back to the mechanic’s school, running excitedly down the street. Our blue Fiat was sitting on a lift above the cement floor, surrounded by mechanic students and their teacher, brows wrinkled and tools in hand. Several of the students had driven back hours along our route with a tow truck, found the car at the farm, and towed it back. The hood of the car was up, and various parts were strewn on the ground. We shook hands with everyone and smiled until our jaws ached, trying to express our gratitude.
The next afternoon, the triumphant teacher came to the hotel to tell us our car was running again. We found the Fiat outside, surrounded by students. “Try! Try!” someone said.
Mary got behind the wheel, turned the key, and the motor roared to life. To cheers, we drove around the corner, the small crowd waving wildly as we circled the block. We emptied our wallets of $23 in dinars, all we had left. The teacher took about $8 of it and returned the rest. We had been rescued, cheaply.
We checked out of the hotel the next morning, and a sharp-eyed woman with a tight bun glared at us as we asked for the bill. We had no idea what our five days would cost, but we were rejuvenated and ready for anything. We figured we could clean toilets and make beds to pay our bill.
The clerk looked up and put her hand on Mary’s head, as if feeling for a fever. Then, as kindly as a grandmother, she smiled. “No money,” she said firmly, holding her palms up to emphasize the point.
We couldn’t believe our good fortune. Our car was fixed and insured, we’d eaten well, we had a little money, and Mary was well again. We felt freed. We headed for Dubrovnik, the fairy tale fortress on the sea.
I still wonder: did the stamp on my passport really matter?
