165 Escape Routes
逃跑途径
While the Warsaw Pact was at full strength, life in Eastern Europe was less than palatable for much of the population.
当华沙条约还颇具威力的时候，东欧生活对绝大多数人来说并不是那么惬意。
At that time,Western planes would often drop pamphlets describing a life of luxury on the other side.
当时，西方的飞机经常会散发一些小册子来宣传他们那边的奢华生活。
It was easy for people to draw parallels with their own dreary existence and, no wonder, many thought of ingenious ways to escape.
因此，人们很容易拿自己沉闷单调的生活与之相比，这样一来，人们就想出了很多别出心裁的逃跑途径，这也是不足为怪的。
In the early days, when the borders were still partially open, a common method was to put some extra panels inside a truck, panelling off a small area for people to hide in.
最初，当边境线还部分开放，没有完全关闭的时候，最普通的逃跑方法是在卡车内部镶嵌一些额外的木板，用这些镶板隔出一块地方以供人们躲藏。
Many went into panic during the meticulous searches by the border police and wet their pants with fear.
边境警察会一丝不苟地上上下下检查，很多人会感到极其恐慌，而且由于害怕，他们的裤子通常都尿湿了。
Some were caught.Other emerged pallid-a whiter shade of pale-on the other side.
有些人被抓住了。还有些人终于到了目的地，但脸上已经没有血色，也就是说，面色苍白。
A variant of this technique was for people to be added to packages of items such as paintings, to be sent across the border as bits of rail freight.
除此之外还有一种逃跑方法：人们躲在包装箱里，比方说藏在装油画的货箱里，被当作铁路货运的散件物品送出边境。
Some people went out and bought themselves kayaks, becoming midnight paddlers across the icy Elbe river.
还有些人会出去买一只小艇，在午夜时分划着独木舟穿过冰冷的易北河。
A few daring souls early on even managed to get across Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, dashing across the line, parallel to the marching Soviet soldiers on parade.
早期甚至有少数大胆鬼成功地穿过了柏林的布兰登堡门，跨越边境线，其勇气简直可以与游行的苏联士兵媲美。
Yet others went through the painstaking process of stitching together metres upon metres of silk to make their own parachutes for gliding down from one of the mountains in an isolated part of the border region.
也有一些人会不辞辛劳的一针一线亲自缝制一米又一米的降落伞，以便能在边境地区的某个偏僻角落顺利滑翔下山。
Many of this attempts paralleled the escapes of British prisoners of war from German camps during World War Ⅱ.
某些逃跑尝试堪与第二次世界大战中从德国集中营逃跑的英国战俘相匹敌。
And just like those days, not all escape attempts were successful.
和那时一样，并非所右的逃跑尝试最后都能成功。
Quite a number of those who tried to escape ended up in paralysis, some of them paralyzed for life.
相当一部分试图逃跑的人都瘫痪了，有些人甚至是终生瘫痪。