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.
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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.
  
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