♫♫ Rising Voices ♫♫
Most of my nice memories from that point in time are related to
playing tennis. I was very impressed by playing tennis
on the next tennis court
to the one where the famous Ion Ţiriac was playing
He's world known
even now.
I was completely forgetting what to do.
My team was vitally interested in me gaining that play
because it was sort of a small scale Davis Cup
so my team had to gain that point. They all went to have lunch
and they left me there because they were very sure that I was going to win.
And by the time they came back I was
led by the other girl
who was very very weak at that time compared to me
but still I was all ears and eyes
to see what happens to the famous player
I still remember, it was one of the very few slaps in my face
that I got from my couch.
David: He literally slapped you in your face?
He did, he did. Twice.
♫♫♫ ♫♫♫
David: What was the first time that you left Eastern Europe?
It was shortly after the revolution.
When I started working with the hospice.
David: And when you told people that you were Romanian, what were their reactions?
What did they associate with Romania?
Very early after the revolution in Romania
I remember people had heard ... at least in the environments that I visited in the UK
I remember I was at a school to talk about the revolution
and tell people how it was
to live in Romania and
most of the things that they had heard about Romania
were related to nightmarish stories
like children in orphanages or children being infected with HIV
so that was probably the first images for the western countries
from Romania.
Which is sad because
we were put under this stigma
of poor children
and in fact there were poor and neglected children in society which was and is a truth unfortunately
even now for some children
But for me I found it unfair
because actually my country has other things as well
to show and to give.
Apart from that, we were also frustrated
because we had been living for so many years in that communist system.
without knowing that there were such unfortunate children living probably very close to us
in orphanages and we hadn't had an idea
of how terrible their situation was.
With the EU accession
some things are slowly - probably too slowly - but are changing
toward the better. Because some European rules or standards
are trying to be if not imposed
at least suggested to the country.
which are in fact good.
We probably would like to see changes
being more rapid.
I remember after the fall of communism in 1989
one of our famous political
How do you call them? People who make comments on politics?
David: Analyst?
Analyst, yeah. Political analyst. He said
our Romania will need at least 20 years to recover after communism
and we were all laughing. And here we are, exactly after 20 years
seeing that he was perfectly right.
And probably from somewhere up there he is smiling to see that he was more than right.
And changes are very slow.
♫♫ Rising Voices ♫♫