It was the first week of January and snow drifted across the Hungarian border into Austria. The mechanical sputter of a small car approaching the rural checkpoint broke the afternoon silence. The guard gestured with his leather-gloved hand for the vehicle to stop.
Steve Glew, 42, stepped out of the car wearing a long trench coat, a blue velour tracksuit and Nike sneakers. His son Joshua, a college freshman, emerged bleary-eyed from the passenger side. A bulging military sack occupied the backseat. Just days earlier the men had arrived in Slovenia by plane from the U.
The guard pointed at the sack with the barrel of his semiautomatic rifle. The guard was in no mood for games. Hungary had war at its borders, and Austria had already turned away 1. Following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Vienna was on edge.
Steve mopped his brow with a paper towel he carried due to his extreme OCD and flinched when the guard tried to frisk him. When more men appeared, sporting leather caps and mustaches and cradling machine guns, he protested that his son needed an aspirin. Guards ripped open the bag in the backseat, perhaps expecting to find guns or grenades.
Instead, hundreds of Pez dispensers spilled onto the snow. The guard inspected one of the four-inch figurines with spring-loaded kickers that spat out perfumed candy bricks. A wide-eyed Santa Claus smiled back at him, giving away nothing. The guards gave the Americans a choice: Surrender the undocumented merchandise and enter Austria, or turn back into war-torn Eastern Europe.
