The Postcard

One day, in the beginning of January 1990, the post office had a nice surprise for us: a postcard.

Why was it a nice surprise? Because it was an invitation to get a passport if we still wanted one. Did we want it? You bet!

You probably remember that we gave up in the idea of ever having a passport, because my brother was in Germany, and had no plans to return.

We didn’t waste any time: went to the office right away and applied for a passport again. And this time, it only took a couple of weeks.

During this time, as you can imagine, we had lots of things to prepare: we would leave our home, not knowing when we’ll be able to return.

We couldn’t tell anyone: if word got around that we wanted to go to USA and remain here, we could not leave.

After we had the passports in our hands, it was time to get our Visa. So, we went to the American Embassy and asked for visas.

They required 3 things to give you a visa:

-you had to own a car

-you had to own a house

-you needed a child that would stay behind

The reason for these requirements was that if you had all those things and had to leave them behind, you were sure to come back.

We were lucky: we had all 3, and received the visa on the spot. We found out that later on (after about 2 weeks), they didn’t give visas to couples anymore.

As soon as we had the visas, we looked for plain tickets, and found them for February 9th, 1990.

What a ride! In only about 3 weeks we were ready to leave our home country.

Stay tuned as I take you though a very bumpy road to the American Dream.