The man with the glass eye stares at us. He must have turned 70, his clothes are old, but decent. His two mutts are howling madly from behind the small house. It’s getting dark.

We must have taken a wrong turn in the myriad of canals, ending up stuck in a swamp somewhere in the Slovakian backcountry. By the looks of the houses and tractors, there could hardly have been much progress in these parts since the communist reforms in the sixties. One creative soul had painted  his garden trees green, otherwise the outlook was rather gloomy.

“Illegale immigranten” the old man says in rough german. His glass eye lies dark and dead in it’s socket.

“Ich rufe Polizei. Nicht bewegen.”

I look over at Embrik. He is sunburned, his beard unkept. His wet long-johns is in a sad state, only half-covered by his dirty and shredded jeans. I was probably just as criminal-looking myself. The old man disappears around the corner of the house, undoubtedly to release the hounds. We fix the canoe betweens us in a 20 meters long cord, and make a run for it.