I was corresponding with my good friend Pepa Brozek, who was studying at a university in the USA — his father was a professor there and a US citizen — and Pepa kept encouraging me to come to the USA instead of Australia. Around that same time it became clear that Kudibal would not be able to return to Australia. I later found out that he did go on a trip to Yugoslavia and visited the Australian Embassy there, but most likely was told exactly what the Czech speaking lady in Vienna had predicted, and he decided to stay in Czechoslovakia. That meant the whole plan we had built together — me working for his real estate agency in Melbourne and attending university part time — would not happen.

The AFCR contacted me that my Australian emigration papers were ready and I had a ticket on a charter boat to Australia. At that point Australia felt too far away from everything I knew, and without Kudibal being there the whole reason for going had disappeared. I canceled the emigration to Australia and applied for emigration to the USA instead. Pepa found me a job promise from an Austrian restaurant on Harvard Square in Cambridge, and one of his MIT classmates, a US citizen, agreed to sponsor me. AFCR arranged the charter flight to New York, the cost of which — I think it was around $170 — I was required to pay back within one year after arriving in the USA.

After exactly one year in Austria, I left for the United States.