This is the translation of the 160 word long story that was selected among the 200 best in the Artgerust contest On the Road for travel stories, I didn’t win but seeing your words in print is already a price by itself. 🙂

It was almost impossible to breathe, locked in like a dog, grabbing my knees to try keep the warmth that escaped through every pore, I could feel the nauseating smell of piled up bodies. Alive or dead? I couldn’t really say, there was just too many people around. Too many people fighting for a gap. Such a nice metaphor of the enterprise we were inmersed in. Go through the border. The most important and expensive journey of our lives. Even if we did it like animals, even though we might never set foot in that dream land.

Inside the track hours are endless, nobody speaks. Like animals. We are afraid of making any sound that gives us away. No one looks through the gaps to see where we are headed or to say goodbye to a landscape we won’t see for a long time. We are nothing but fear.

It’s not a trip you’d find in travel guides. However, for me that was the journey that changed everything.