I mentioned that we didn’t have any foreign currency when we had the search in our home. Now that we were stateless, and required to pay in dollars, we had to buy dollars. But there was no free market to do that safely. So, I went to the School of Architecture where I had heard that many Arab students changed dollars. Although such changes were not legal, I had to stop some foreign students and ask about changing. I found two such students. They each wanted to exchange î500. We only had î1000 worth of our currency to exchange. These students came to our house at night and we exchanged. Later on that night, they came back to our house, drunk, banged on the doors and said they wanted sexual favors. We threatened to call the police and they left.
So, one night we went to the train station and many of our friends and co-workers came to see us off. It was the beginning of an adventure more adventurous than we suspected.
The train was very cold. Luckily, our dog warmed us. He was allowed to travel, unconfined, in the main area with us. Again, we were pioneers. There were no rules for people such as we were. Nobody would take their dog when immigrating. In Belgrade we took a taxi to the other train station and left our luggage in storage. We took our dog and went to explore Belgrade on foot between trains. Compared to our country, Belgrade already seemed much freer, much more westernized. We were amazed.
Then we took another train and left for Rome. This train was too hot. Again, the dog was allowed to travel unconfined with us. When we got into Rome, it seemed like a fairytale. It was nighttime and everything was brightly lit. (We had been used to the semi-darkness in Romania. The austerity regime prohibited public funds to be spent on too much illumination.) Even at the train station, there were lots of stores that carried merchandise that we had never seen in our life. It was Wonderland. We had been told that the boarding house was not far from the train station. So, we decided to save taxi fare and walk. But we had 9 suitcases and a dog. We carried a few suitcases at a time for a few yards and then came back for the others. And thus we made our way to the boarding house. It was on the 5th or 6th floor of a high-rise building. We managed to drag everything up and then we presented ourselves at the main office. When they saw us with the dog, they were amazed and said that they never imagined that somebody could bring a pet with them and they were not supposed to take in animals. They said that during the daytime we had to be out of the boarding house with the dog. At night, we could take the dog in.
The boarding house was very sparse. My idea of an orphanage. Each family was assigned a room with a sink. Bathroom and shower facilities were elsewhere and had to be shared. There was no hot water, only tepid (it was February and very cold so we didn’t take any showers while there). The beds were rather primitive, hard and the blankets were threadbare. Again, our dog snuggled between us at night to keep us warm. The menu was invariably pasta with tomato sauce every lunch and dinner. Luckily, it was tasty and we didn’t have to partake of this too long. We were only there for 5 days. There were some Romanians there that had been living in that boarding house for weeks or months. Although they had left Romania, further verifications brought to light some aspects of their life that prohibited their entry into the USA. Their fate was subject of debate.
Although before getting a visa from the Americans, in Romania, we had been required to bring copies of our legal records complete with fingerprints and also health records with current vaccinations, lung x-rays, etc., they did all these over again in Rome. Probably they did not trust the Romanian doctors. We had to have other vaccinations, x-rays, fingerprints, etc.
But we had time to see Rome on foot. Everything seemed out of this world. We were in awe of everything. And we felt happy beyond belief. We went into stores one at a time. The other one was holding the dog outside. This way, we visited the Vatican too. We wanted to take a bus to the Vatican because it was raining hard. Freezing rain. Unfortunately, they did not allow dogs on buses so we had to walk for quite a long time. But it was worth it. My mother and I were joking that probably our dog was the only Romanian dog that had been at the Vatican.
Some immigrants at the boarding house suggested that we go to an X-rated movie (nothing of the kind was ever distributed in Romania.) Out of curiosity, we went, and also went to a live striptease show given in a large theatre. We were the only women at both performances and we created a sensation. Several men followed us to the boarding house trying to make our acquaintance. We had a hard time convincing them to give up.
Then it was time to leave. The flight from Rome to our destination, Los Angeles, was paid for by a sponsoring agency. We had to sign a form stating that we would pay back when we could. However, we had to pay for a crate for our dog.
On the plane, we discussed our situation with a number of people. We met a nice family who was returning to San Francisco from a trip to Egypt. We discussed with them all the way from Rome to New York. In New York, we had to be processed as new immigrants. This took a few hours. Then we boarded a plane to Los Angeles where our sponsors were waiting for us.
We were dead tired. It was evening but the weather was nice, typical California weather. Our sponsors had a large car that seemed very impressive to us. All the way, they played music with liberty themes. It felt unreal.
(to be continued)
