I swam and swam and swam, and at some point I reached the shore, 30cm deep. I literally swam to the shore like a boat. You see, it was totally black – black-out. The only thing I could see were the cars on the Yugoslav side. So I left the water, my legs shaking, shaking. I walked up, it was going up-hill to the street. I walked, walked, walked, and straight into a bush. It was like in a film. You reach the other side, and walk straight into a bush of thorns. That’s where I loose my glasses. And what happens?
I’ve told this a hundred times. What do you do when you loose your glasses in the dark? Don’t move. Don’t walk. In the wrong movie you walk around and step right onto your glasses. So I crouch down and look for the glasses, find them there. I put them on, free myself from the thorns, keep walking upwards.
The street – I sit and wait for Nettchen and Mehdert. To make sure that I would recognise their car, we had put tape onto one of the two headlights, to form a cross. So I look and look, but no car has this cross. I waited for a really long time. But there was one car that kept coming and going, that was driving slower than the others. It could have been the guards doing their rounds. But I got impatient, so I went up and waived. And it was Nettchen and Mehdert.
We drove straight to Belgrade then. We enter the embassy, and the guy there asks, “Have you come through barbed wire?” And that’s where I look down at myself for the first time – there’s blood and scratches everywhere. Everything is torn and scratched from those thorns.
If you see what Nettchen and Mehdert and I did swimming over there, looking at it now, it takes courage, it takes courage.
You know that if they get you, they’re allowed to shoot. Even just for fun, to see if they get you. That I managed that… I mean, I knew that I could swim for 90 minutes. But in a swimming pool in Lichtenberg you swim without stress. This is a whole different story…
