Since I was a child for as long as I can remember,
Astronomy was the only subject that interested me. When I
was 5 or 6, I remember asking my mother "Why the Sky is
Blue And Not of Some Other Color?" or being obsessed with
the question of "Why Objects are Falling Down and Do Not
Stay Put?" or, "What Is It That Is Pulling Down All
Objects?" To all these and many more questions of this
nature, my mother would answer that when I go to school,
I will find out the answers to all my
questions.
And since this curiosity never left me and Astronomy in
Romania was studied at the prestigious Faculty of
Mathematics and Mechanics at the University of Bucharest
(photo at left), there I was, enrolled as a student, from
1963 to 1968.
In
1965, when the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu came
to power, I was in my third year as a student pondering
how I would be able to defect after my graduation.
Everyone at that time in Romania knew that the people
from Yugoslavia could travel anywhere they wanted
to
and that many Romanians who went to visit Yugoslavia were
somehow able to find their way to the West but no one
knew how they did it since once they defected they
vanished without a trace. Because of this situation,
Ceausescu made sure that no tourist visa was to be issued
to anybody applying for Yugoslavia, notwithstanding the
good relations that were being cultivated between these
two countries.
In Romania the
following process was in place for those "insane"
Romanians seeking to travel outside the country. For an
exorbitant fee, to discourage application, you had to buy
an application for the purpose of obtaining a visa for
the country you intended to visit. After completing the
said application, stating with exactness the dates of
departure and return for the visit together with the
reason for the visit, you needed to submit the
application to the local Police Station. There, you were
advised that in two (2) months you would have an
answer. Virtually there was no chance that anybody could
be approved for a tourist visa to the West or to
Yugoslavia and this existing process was known to all
Romanians as being an absolute waste of money. (And
speaking of money, I have included at right a beautiful
photo of the Bucharest's Central Bank.)
This was the
background and the reality that I had to face at the time
of my graduation. And, as you will see in the next
section, against all odds, I was able somehow to succeed,
first by finding a "crack" and then, by being able to
open a "window" which eventually was able to set me
free.
