Tag #129516 - Interview #84078 (Roseanu Oscar)

My first trip to the West happened in 1967; we traveled by coach and all of us were teachers. I was a good friend of the manager of the National Tourism Office, who had been my co-worker at the State Control Commission. This is how people get around… We went on an 18-day trip to Italy. All the people we were with did was focus on shopping. For us, Romanians, it was a delight to shop from stands in the street, because we had never seen anything like that at home. One of the teachers came back with 4-5 blankets. In order to avoid any problems at the customs, she gave each blanket to some of us. Hillbilly conduct, what can I say? At least in most of the cases… As for me, I wasn’t interested in petty trade; we were in Italy after all. I remember Venice, with the gondolas afloat all night long and with many Americans and Englishmen… The gondoliers would ask ‘Con musica o senza musica?’ [Italian for ‘With or without music?’] They played the accordion… They all sounded like opera singers; they were great! They spent the entire night singing and walking – no one slept in Venice. We took long walks and admired them every night… We left Venice and went to Padua, then to Verona, then Bologna, Siena, Florence, and Rome. Splendid! We developed a taste for these trips, so we filed for permission to go to Italy again, then to France.