During this time, when we are fighting heroically with the Schengen visa, I thought it would be appropriate, as a memory, to remind the young or not so young how to get a visa to travel to the European Community and then to the EU, 30 years ago. It was not a given, it was a right we had to fight for. Today, with three clicks of the mouse, you can buy a plane ticket, book a hotel and rent a car almost anywhere in the world.

On the other side of the Atlantic – less, but this is another story, which only completes everything. What you will read in the following lines are very subjective memories and opinions and are considered as such. But this is the power of memory: to intervene where history seems to have fallen asleep.

My first visa application dates back to the spring of 1994. Three decades ago, I was a student, happy, penniless (as always, the average salary was somewhere around $20 a month, but the brands were in power), I was preparing to go to France, “over the sea”, as they said back then.

I remember the atmosphere that prevailed in that “yard of miracles”: a long, impressive, compact queue, which I later met only during religious pilgrimages.

The trip was made thanks to the invitation of some friends from the region and the city of Nantes, who participate in the then known “twinning” actions between localities in the Romanian area and localities in France, Switzerland and Belgium, founded in the last years of the Ceausescu regime as a reaction to the systematization actions village

The consular department of the French embassy was located somewhere in the area of ​​Piaţa Română, where the German gymnasium was then, on Christiana Tella Street. I perfectly remember the atmosphere that prevailed in that “yard of miracles” as if it were yesterday: a long, impressive, compact queue, which I later met only during religious pilgrimages, which I studied for many years.

The huge number of “visa applicants”, as they were officially called, can be explained by the fact that we were in the middle of the pre-Easter period, the holidays were approaching and many Romanians were going to visit their family, relatives and friends. I arrived at the perimeter of the counseling center in the evening, after a long train journey from the province to Bucharest.

Other visa seekers had already warned me in simple words (I have to emphasize this aspect, there was no Internet, discussion forums, social networks, etc.) that I would have a long and difficult night, suffering before joy. As now, the spring was moody and relatively cold, and at one point a fire of sorghum and scrap wood was lit in a small galvanized tin barrel stolen from a nearby construction site.

Bucharest has always been a huge construction site, but then it was an absolute outlaw from that point of view. Out of nowhere, street vendors appeared selling tea, nes, the horrible “nes” rubbed into a 1990s mug, and “fake” cigarettes, sandwiches, and other nighttime survival necessities.

With dawn, the row, like a living animal, was filled with great excitement and some impatience for the end…

After the line had strengthened and settled, in view of the long-awaited appearance the next morning, several lists of names began to circulate among us, special lists of order, with which the entrepreneurs tried to discipline the waiting and impatience to see you at the front doors of the consulate.

With dawn, the row, like a living animal, was filled with great excitement and a kind of impatience for the end, full of tension. No more fire, benches, cigarettes and nothing, the last assault was approaching.

We passed one by one, in a disciplined manner, through the “turnstile”, a revolving entrance sorting system similar to the one the Bucharest metro had had from the beginning, only it was a double pewter sleeve to prevent any attempt to double up or go around; The whole installation itself was strikingly similar to a lathe, a gate through which the calm sheep pass one by one to be milked, up the mountain.

A presentable guy, in a “civilian”, sober suit and tie, very excited and bossy, he also teased us with purposeful words and commands, before we had crossed the threshold of room zero, joy and hope. I was frantically looking for a passport, which had to be opened precisely “by photo” so as not to tire and unnecessarily demand the employees of the consulate. Then there was a long list of mandatory documents for obtaining a visa, its card file. If my memory serves me right, for those who had private invitations, a cadastral survey of the host’s residence was also required, proving that it had the necessary living space to accommodate an Eastern European yearning for air and the West.

Travel health insurance was purchased with typical Romanian cheerfulness and irresponsibility – only in the early 1990s I doubt they actually covered anything if needed – from the forefathers of today’s brokers housed in old decommissioned tin wagons.

The caravans were placed on blocks, literally strategically located on street corners, next to the most visited embassies and consulates. As olfactory memory is the most persistent of all human “memories”, I remember that the health insurance policies of the time, printed for some reason on colored paper, pink, fluorescent green, yellow, etc., smelled strongly of tobacco, even after several weeks after purchase. He smoked heavily, he smoked suicidally in small wagons. Other times, other cigarettes, other standards of society and advertising.

“Chains, bring the chains. The consul said to put on the shackles”

Having received such a desired visa to the main place of travel (people cried or laughed, depending on the circumstances, a small plastic rectangle 5×10 centimeters could change life, fate, career, marriage), it was necessary to hurry to get a transit visa as well. Mostly Austria, yes, Austria, again, because geography and the highway placed it firmly in the path of the great escape to the West. At that time, the Austrian consulate was somewhere on Vasile Laskar street, at the intersection with Maria Rosetti. I make these clarifications because it was and is a narrow space between two very busy streets, including a tram line etc. The row here had nowhere to unfold, it did not find its natural order, as it was before.

“Chains, bring the chains. The consul said to wear shackles” – a call that echoes in consciousness and memory decades later. Don’t get me wrong though, just a figurative expression.

The “chains” in question were long cords covered with textile material, such as we see in airports today, which were installed at times of maximum abundance to prevent the crowd from completely blocking the street. Once you also had a transit visa, you were doomed, in most cases, to travel by bus for hours and hours to your final destination.

What else can be said to add? Perhaps another souvenir related to the actual processing of visas. At lunchtime, after processing visa applications, an official (of the embassy, ​​which represented a tiny, delicate and lush kingdom located further in the fog of northern Europe) came out in time to the fence of the compound with a small woven basket. from reeds

There were not many people willing, it was difficult for the rich, it was almost impossible to get a visa, it was not the main direction for Romanians. The official literally emptied the basket of passports over the fence, and then a dozen impatient people distributed them among themselves, reading aloud the names written on cardboard covers, some of which still had the coat of arms of the SSR, hammer and sickle: Ionescu, Popescu, Vasilescu.

No trace of GDPR, data protection and the like, everything was simple, direct, efficient. Not human, but that’s another untold story.

Instead of a bottom line: Make the most of the rights you’ve earned today. The wait in Nedlac in the summer, which I already wrote about here, is part of a long series of battles that the Romanians had to fight and must fight to show that we are born Europeans, not made. The rest is mass immigration.

N.Editor: Mirel Banika is a researcher in the field of anthropology. The last published book: “Between Two Worlds”. Orthodox monasticism and modernity, Polirom Publishing House, 2024.