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.
