It was
Tuesday morning April 14, 1969. After my usual
breakfast, hot water with sugar, I went to see my
friend who greeted me at the Station and asked him
if during his lunch time he could come with me to
the Italian Embassy. "Sure I could, but Why?" he
asked. Well, I said to him that last summer, at a
Romanian resort, I met a beautiful Italian woman
from Trieste, Italy, and that it would be fun to
visit her over the weekend. Suspicious over the
story, my friend nevertheless went along with me.
Since I did not speak either Yugoslavian or Italian,
I needed my friend to translate at the Embassy what
I wanted which was a 48-hour pass to Italy.
At the Italian
Embassy in Belgrade we spoke with a Vice Consul.
After explaining to him what I wanted, and after
looking at my passport, he said:
"You
see here in your passport it is written in black
ink Good for Yugoslavia only. We, from
here, cannot give you more authority in
traveling than your own Government has given to
you. To be allowed to travel to Italy you would
have had to have that authority given to you
from your Romanian Government. We cannot
override that authority from here. Now, if you
want, I could call Bucharest and ask for that
authority over the telephone."
"No, thank you",
I responded, "but that will not be necessary. I
did not realize that such an involved process is
needed for such a simple request." To this The
Vice Consul replied:
"It
is not an involved process. The process is quite
simple if you had in your passport permission to
travel to Italy. Instead of having written in
your passport good for Yugoslavia, you needed to
have written Yugoslavia and Italy."
Thanking the
Vice Consul for his time we left the premises
returning to the Observatory. The day went on
uneventfully. In the afternoon, I got acquainted
with a senior researcher from the Observatory who
later invited me to his home to have dinner with
his family. We had a common Hungarian heritage.
When I went to my apartment in the evening, I
began reflecting on everything that had transpired
at the Embassy recognizing that my progress
towards my escape did not look good at all.
Clearly I was at an impasse with no visible
solution.
Next day,
Wednesday April 16, 1969, passed completely
uneventfully. My original 200 Yugoslavian dinars
were still intact as I was determined to cling on
to this money at all cost. My dinner that day was
at another home of someone from the Observatory
after he received from me a beautiful Romanian
leather box. I was unhappy with my lack of
progress but by no means desperate.
Next morning, on
Thursday April 17, 1969 I decided that I had to
try my luck with the Embassy of the other
bordering country with Yugoslavia, Austria. In the
same way as I did two days ago, I went to my
Yugoslavian friend asking him if he could assist
me during his lunch hour to go to the Austrian
Embassy for obtaining a 2-day entry permit for the
weekend on grounds that I have a distant relative
in Graz who I would like to see. Getting even more
suspicious to my new story, he nevertheless
agreed. The experience at the Austrian Embassy was
practically a "carbon copy" experience to the one
encountered at the Italian Embassy.
After leaving empty
handed from the Austrian Embassy, I told my friend
to go back alone to the Observatory as I would
like to walk and explore by myself a little bit of
the city. Here I was, walking randomly in a
totally unfamiliar city, tormented by this
singular question: How were other Romanians able
to find their way to escape and I didn't even have
a clue? Clearly, I reasoned, there must be a way
to get out of here to the free world as we knew in
Romania of many rumored stories of such escapes. I
ruled out any possibility of my running out in the
darkness of night trying to cross over the border.
That scenario somehow did not appeal to me at all.
The solution, I reasoned, must lie somewhere else.
As I was
struggling with those questions and walking
nowhere in particular, suddenly I saw at a
distance a giant billboard with flashing lights,
impossible to miss, which was advertising to buy
international railroad tickets. As a butterfly
attracted by light I went straight in that
direction. As I got closer, I saw the Railroad
Ticket Agency right beneath. As if being
hypnotized, I entered into this Agency and noted
on one of its walls a beautiful mural map of
Europe. I saw there the city of Graz in Austria as
being extremely close to the Yugoslavian border.
Without thinking too much, I went to an open
cashier and asked in Russian how much a third
class ticket to Graz cost. The woman responded
that for a one-way ticket to Graz the cost was 180
dinars. I then asked the woman whether I could buy
a ticket now if I forgot to bring my passport with
me. To this she said:
"Oh,
sure you can buy any ticket that you want. We do
not deal with passports here. That is done at
the border. Here we deal with tickets only. If
you have the money you can buy any ticket that
you like."
Stunned by the
answer, I asked the woman for the first train to
Graz. "Tomorrow evening at eight" --she replied.
Then I continued by saying:
"I
would like a third class ticket to Graz for
tomorrow evening. Here is 200 dinars."
In no time she
gave me the ticket with the 20 dinars in change. I
quickly and quietly left the Agency not believing
what had just transpired. I began walking
euphorically through the city for a number of
hours. My ecstatic mood was not so much that I was
confident of the ultimate success which clearly I
was not, but rather that I had found a risk-free
scheme of escaping. In my mind the worse scenario
that could have happened to me was that at the
border I would be returned back for lack of a
proper visa on my passport. The only thing that I
could have lost thus was the 180 dinars paid for
the ticket. And that was truly an excellent
risk-factor.
Back at the
Observatory, I did not say a word to anyone about
what had just happened. My good Yugoslavian friend
invited me for the second time to dinner as we
liked each other very much. His wife was extremely
attentive and liking much my Romanian tablecloth
present.
Going back to my
apartment, I began thinking what a tremendous
break I got with the Ticket Agency here and how
different from Romania the whole thing was. It was
this experience of stumbling over this Ticket
Agency that made me question whether or not a
divine power was not in fact watching over me!
Tucked into my
bed, I went to sleep knowing that this was my very
last night here.
