It was a long time ago and I was a veteran and backpacking around the Mediterranean. We were a collective, of sorts - two Canadian girls, a German guy from Hamburg, a young Russian emigre from Paris, a German girl from Berlin, and myself. With the exception of Vassily the Russian, we had all met in Venice a few weeks before, where we crashed in a hostel. Vassily had been hiking with me since Marseilles.

We were making our way through what was then Yugoslavia, down the Dalmatian coast, one of the more beautiful regions of Europe. At the time, Yugoslavia was a Communist nation, held together by the dictator Josip Tito.

The Slavs are a collection of Balkan tribes that never got along. The Croats are Catholic. The Serbs, a majority, are Orthodox. The Bosnians were a mix of both plus a large percentage of Muslims, holdovers from the time when the Ottoman Turks ruled the region. In the north the Slovenians (Catholic) were more attuned to Austria. The Montenegrans were Orthodox and sort of a kin to the Serbs.

They all never got along. You would come to a village where Serbs lived on one side of the road and Croats on the other. They hardly every spoke to each other. The Muslims tended to gather in small enclaves and never spoke to either the Serbs or their Croatian neighbors.

All of this would boil up much later after Tito died and the Serbs and Croats started fighting. Then came the Bosnian wars, but that would be another story. Ethnic cleansing was a thing just waiting to happen.

Back then, the central government held all that in check. The secret police were everywhere.

The Yugoslavs were all amazed at the USA. They could not understand how we got along together, blacks, whites and Hispanics. Catholics, Protestants and Jews. "How do you do it?" They would ask. "Which group is in charge?"

Any time I needed assistance or had to clear up a question of why an American was hiking about in a Communist country, I would pull out a pack of Camel cigarettes and offer one to the questioners. That always brought up smiles and friendly demeanor. Camels were better than a passport!

We were camping in the hills just outside a city named Split. The area was stunning. The air was clean and piney. The water was cold and clear. We decided to venture into the port city and see what the town had to offer.

At a little cafe we were approached by two men dressed in black leather jackets. They wore grim expressions and demanded our papers.

We all got out our passports.

They gave me several eye-stares and soon handed me back my passport and ID. The Canadians got a real look-over, foreheads to toes. Both girls were stunners. The Germans were hated, of course because of the Second World War, but they were OKed. Then the got to Vassily.

I said that Vassily was a Russian emigre. He had left the Soviet Union in an exchange program. I had never known they even participated in student exchanges, but he managed to stay in France and received a French passport in time.

They read his name and birthplace on the passport, looked back and forth at him, and asked in Serbo-Croat (the Yugoslav language) how he could be French and born in the USSR.

Vassily could speak a little Serbo-Croat, because it is very close to Russian. He explained that he was an emigrant and now lived in France.

I thought about getting out the Camels, but the frowns on the cops' faces made me forget it.

They asked him to come with them. He protested. They got rather unruly at that point and warned us not to interfere.

They marched him off to the police station and we followed at a distance. We asked if we could help when we got to the staion. We were told that Vass would be staying the night while the police awaited the man from Belgrade, probably one of the party officials or secret police. Vassily's story would be checked out.

"He may be a spy," the policeman told us.

Vassily? A spy? What a laugh! He was nineteen years old and couldn't even find Yugoslavia on a map! He was a joker, a musician and an avid reader of James Bond novels.

We dallied around Split for three days awaiting our friend. Finally, they released him and we all skedaddled away from Split.

He told us they fed him well, washed his clothing and gave him beer. We envied him!

A well-dressed Yugo cop had come down from some place and interviewed him several times. He kept repeating his story until they checked out all the facts. Then they told him he was a good friend of the Yugoslavian people, because as a Russian he was almost kin. The police at the station were actually sad that he had to go!

What Vassily told us after that was interesting. They kept asking him about me. "Was the American working for the government there? Was he still in the US Army (How did they know that I had been in the Army?) Had he taken any photographs of sensitive locations? Was he sending letters and making telephone calls? Did he have a radio transmitter somewhere?

Of course, Vassily told them "No" in every case.

When we got to Dubrovnik we had to take a ship to Italy in order to get down to Greece - Albania stood between us and Greece and Albania was a very bad place for westerners back then. On the boat ride to Bari, Italy, Vassily and our group said goodbye. He had to get back to Paris.

I gave him the rest of the Lira I had, about sixty dollars worth and bid him goodbye.

He told me that those police really wanted to have me in the jail but were afraid of creating an incident. He said they told him that.

"Don't ever go back there," Vassily said.

Years later I was in Paris and tried to find Vassily. He wasn't in any phone book. I often wonder what happened to the kid.

The Germans and Canadians and I went on to Corfu and Greece, and finally to Crete. That island was the farthest point in my meandering. The 3 girls went to Turkey. The kid from Hamburg had to go home. I found myself alone on Crete, a beautiful island, particularly at any sunset. I ran low on money and after a month long stay on Gozo and Malta, I took my flights back to the States.

I sure miss the freedom of those days, our merry little band of troopers who sang and trekked our way across so many miles. We were true Dharma Bums.